Mathematics education beliefs and practices of Under 3s educators in Australia

ABSTRACT

There is general agreement that young children are capable of accessing mathematical ideas and should be given the opportunity to do so in their early childhood educational settings. However, existing research has established a range of challenges for early childhood mathematics education; in particular, related to educators’ confidence and competence in teaching mathematics. This article presents data from a national survey to address the research question: What are the mathematics education beliefs and practices of Under 3s educators in Australia? Findings from a sample of 195 respondents currently working in an Under 3s educational setting are reported in relation to three themes: 1. Educators’ understandings and self-understandings; 2. Educators’ skills and capabilities; and 3. Educators’ values and norms. In contrast to existing research that indicates low self-efficacy in mathematics among early childhood educators, this sample of Australian educators report positive self-understandings in relation to mathematics. They report high levels of comfort in their mathematics education practice, and appear to be perceptive of the range of mathematical ideas with which babies and toddlers engage. Moreover, educators appear to be comfortable in gaining ideas from babies and toddlers, which is an important practice contributing towards meaningful mathematics education for these young children.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood
• mathematics education
• educators
• birth to three
• infants and toddlers

Acknowledgements

1. The author would like to acknowledge Paige Lee and Sarah Murphy for their assistance with this article. 2. Aspects of this article were presented at the 42nd annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia. This article is a significant expansion of the earlier conference paper. The earlier reference is as follows:

MacDonald, A. 2019. “What is mathematics education for children under three? A snapshot of findings from a national survey.” In Mathematics education research: Impacting practice. Proceedings of the 42nd annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, edited by G. Hine, S. Blackley, and A. Cooke, 468–475. Perth: MERGA.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [grant number DE180100399].