Preparing Data Representation Activities for Young Learners

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate pre-service pre-school education teachers’ data representation activities in terms of their relation to real life, the appropriateness of the data that the children can collect, the conformability of the graphs required for the data representation to the children's level, and the clarity of open-ended questions asked to children during the activity. Six senior pre-service teachers participated in this study. Findings revealed that pre-service teachers determined their subjects for graph activities related to real life based on children’s interests. They have chosen the data that the children can collect and they used real objects or pictures in order to concretize data for children. Pre-service teachers mostly chose picture graphs as children are familiar with grouping and classifying activities and they are more capable of making and interpreting picture graphs. Pre-service teachers asked effective questions about the activities to help students understand the graphs.

Keywords

• early childhood education
• graph activities
• mathematics education
• pre-service teachers.