CAREER: Investigating Young Children's Opportunities to Learn Mathematics in Early Childhood Classrooms

The nation is embarking upon a new era in early childhood education. Unprecedented policy and funding initiatives at state and federal levels are underway to expand access to publicly funded preschool. These efforts are driven by considerable evidence that high quality early learning opportunities have far-reaching academic, social, and economic effects. Research has shown early mathematics learning, in particular, to be predictive of later life and learning outcomes. However, classroom studies raise concerns that some children’s early schooling experiences are characterized by exclusion from opportunities to learn, invisibility in the classroom community, and negative relational interactions with peers or teachers (Battey, 2013; Parks, 2020; Shalaby, 2017; Wood et al., 2018). Realizing the potential of preschool to address historical inequities demands a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the varied ways opportunities to learn play out for individual children within and across classrooms.

The goal of this project is to illuminate the variability in opportunities for mathematics learning in early childhood through capturing the experiences of individual children over time. A qualitative, longitudinal investigation will follow 15 young children (from preschool to kindergarten), from three different school sites within a district that serves a large proportion of children from racially, linguistically, and economically minoritized populations, across three years of early schooling. The goal is to understand how these children navigate opportunities to participate in mathematical activity, their perspectives of what knowing and doing mathematics entails, and the resources they draw upon to engage in mathematical practices. Data collected will include video recordings of children’s participation in specific instructional activities (e.g., Counting Collections), field notes from classroom observations, artifacts such as mathematical tasks and children’s written representations, and interviews with children and their classroom teachers. Findings from the project will (1) advance the field’s understanding of the nuances of and conditions under which particular approaches to mathematics teaching and learning may (or may not) promote more equitable participation, (2) provide insights into relationships between in-the-moment interactions with teachers and peers, and children’s long-term experiences within the institution of school, and (3) document young children’s emerging participation in mathematical practices such as communicating about their mathematical ideas, using tools and representations, and engaging with one another’s contributions. The project will provide case studies, depictions of instructional practice, and longitudinal records of learning over time to inform policy and practice in the teaching and learning of early math. Such insights are a critical step if public education is to fulfill its promise as a vehicle for social change and the betterment of society.