Teachers’ Roles in Preschool Children’s Collective Mathematical Reasoning

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study teachers’ roles in preschool children’s mathematical reasoning using analysis of epistemological moves. Three moves were identified: instructional moves, confirming move and a new move, concluding move. There were no generative moves encouraging the children to produce different arguments for choice of strategy or conclusion. Both the confirming move and the concluding move functioned as an end of the reasoning and thereby limited the opportunities for the children to learn creative mathematical reasoning. This although that several encounters were created by the preschool teachers, both as formal planned situations and unformal such as free play.

Keywords

• epistemological moves
• mathematical reasoning
• preschool education