What makes a task a problem in early childhood education?

ABSTRACT

This article begins with a theoretical discussion of the characteristics that a task should feature to be regarded as a mathematics problem suitable for pre-primary students. Those considerations are followed by a report of a classroom experience in which three problems involving quotative or partitive division were posed to pre-primary school children to determine the presence of otherwise of the respective characteristics. The findings show that the characteristics of pre-primary education problems depend on two factors: mathematical activity that engages children and a structure that favours both their understanding of the problem and the application and verification of the solutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Characteristics of problems
• division
• early childhood
• mathematical problems
• pre-primary
• problem solving

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.