Hello I'm Elsa Nunez president of Eastern Connecticut State University at
Eastern we encourage our students whenever possible to work with faculty
on applied research so I am pleased to share with you new research findings
about factors that contribute to children's mathematical abilities this
information gathered by faculty and student researchers in Eastern Center
for early childhood education has powerful implications for teachers who
work with young children I hope you find it useful the purpose of the map placed
study was to investigate teacher-child interactions during play settings so but
specifically we wanted to look at the math interaction so we wanted to study
what kind of teacher interactions led to stronger mathematical engagement for you
with preschool children we were curious about whether teachers interactions with
children to kind of support play would actually have an impact on their
learning of number their mathematical thinking
Eastern Connecticut State University students assisted with carrying out the
study we did in assessment the team assessment with children in the
beginning of the school year to get a baseline about their mathematical
ability and then we reassessed them at the end of the year to see how they
progressed in those mathematical abilities we then also looked at through
some video how the interactions with their teachers helped those mathematical
progressions we recorded the children during play and especially when the
teacher would come near them and talk to them
we didn't ask teachers to do anything special they didn't you know try out any
kind of intervention or method of teaching we took videos of that very
natural interaction during free playtime in classrooms and then we edited those
clips to only the teacher-child interactions and then we coated those
based on certain standards that we had like how long they were if they were
good interactions or not and things like that we looked at whether there were
relationships between the ways the teachers kind of supported play or
interacted with children in play and mathematical thinking the second part
was we looked at the math behind the play interactions what is related to
number sense was it related to problem-solving we looked at measurement
opportunities we looked at communication maths talk communication and our results
were pretty striking and fairly interesting we began to discover that
there were several ways that teachers support math while they're just kind of
interacting with them as they play all right now I have another question how do
we find out the answer to that how do we find out if we're actually right there
were three major findings in the study the first was related to teacher-child
interactions around number sense the first math related result spoke that the
more you talk about numbers to children the more they learn numbers how many
blocks do we have here can we count them don't you help me come
on that's so - let's count how tall it is one two three number sense for
mathematical interactions is a basic understanding of numerals and quantities
there was a lot of interactions with number sense around board games the
teacher was able to observe the mathematical ability by seeing how many
spaces that child moved and how that child understood the correlation between
number and quantity very good research has shown that number sense is very
critical in preschool so wasn't surprising that we found that these
children learned so much of number sense the second finding was related to
communication between teachers and children about mathematics the more
interesting part of our study was that we found communication was significantly
important for these children communication around mathematics is
basically the child explaining their understanding of a concept what are the
differences between the red one the blue one and the yellow here bigger and here
is where it may be a child explaining how they came to understand that two
objects are not the same size maybe they compare it using standard measurement
tools maybe they put it next to each other but it's the child's ability to
explain their processes and that can be aided by questions from the adult how do
we find out if it fits I imagine all right so why don't we do
that you have a ruler so the teachers and the children who talk about math so
they actually talked about their counting they talked about their
mathematical problem solving they talked about measurement it's up to 11 and how
many words the light box how many inches King tensor which one's bigger these
children talked about math and when they did it wasn't just to say what answer
they got which is the most typical expectation in classrooms they talked
about their processes how they went about solving things or they talked
about why something did not work so those who engaged in math talk had
greater mathematical games at the end of the school year
this suggests that effort to get children to think numerically and also
to talk about what they're doing as they're thinking about number other
areas of math that those things will actually have a positive impact on their
math learning and this has not actually been proven by earlier research and it's
only been talked about theoretically in the math circle but it's puzzle
interesting for us to see a significant result in our study the third major
finding was about the importance of good fit interactions during all types of
play when teachers support children's play and they supported in a way that
really is aligned with what children are currently doing we call this a good fit
play interaction and has three flowers where else do you see that
a teacher kind of studies what a child is currently doing in play and then
provides just the right amount of support to help them I think more deeply
or become more symbolic in their play and what we found are those good fit
play interactions were associated with increases in mathematical thinking this
is the most exciting finding at least to me is a play researcher teachers
interactions support play itself and then subsequent gains in children's play
ability will support cognitive development intellectual development and
that includes mathematical thinking research in cognitive science talks
about how when you articulate your problems then you are actually seeking
out a solution and your mind starts to put the variable thoughts into a
solution path so this was interesting to see that connection in the preschool
area the study suggests that teachers have a role to play in this process that
they through their interactions can really support higher levels of
mathematical thinking and the best way that they're able to do this is through
interactions that support play itself that really help children to play more
complex or symbolic ways the most interesting thing was the amount of
mathematical knowledge that the children actually have and the ability for these
teachers to bring that out through their questions and their scaffolding you know
what this number is well there's a four and A one forty one I think that there's
times when we really underestimate the abilities of preschoolers and children
in general and to see these children understanding that you can measure these
objects and compare objects at age three four and five was amazing to me the
whole experience of the study in general was experience that most teachers don't
usually get and I think that all of that will influence how I will become a
teacher and how I treat my children in the classroom and things that I can
incorporate area our finding supports the theory
that language is really important in learning and that play is useful and it
goes beyond just supporting social and emotional development the play also
contributes to intellectual development and even academic learning