Innovative Approaches in Early Childhood Mathematics

Oliver Thiel is an Associate Professor at Queen Maud University College in Trondheim, Norway. He has 20 years of teaching and research experience in the field of early childhood mathematics education in Germany and Norway. He is convenor of the EECERA Special Interest Group: Mathematics Birth to Eight Years.

The chapters in this book investigate and reflect on many of the issues and challenges raised by the current trends and tensions in early childhood mathematics education. It was originally published as a special issue of the European Early Childhood Education Research Journal.

Introduction - Innovative approaches in early childhood mathematics 1. Teachers' involvement in children's mathematizing - beyond dichotomization between play and teaching 2. Young children's mathematical learning opportunities in family shopping experiences 3. Mathematizing in preschool: children's participation in geometrical discourse 4. Affective-motivational aspects of early childhood teacher students' knowledge about mathematics 5. Mathematical pedagogical content knowledge in Early Childhood Education: tales from the 'great unknown' in teacher education in Portugal 6. The impact of the Promoting Early Number Talk project on the development of abstract representation in mathematics 7. The role of and connection between systematization and representation when young children work on a combinatorial task 8. What makes a task a problem in early childhood education? 9. Learning through play - pedagogy and learning outcomes in early childhood mathematics 10. Using a bioecological framework to investigate an early childhood mathematics education intervention