Our goal in this article is to discuss the importance of problems in early childhood education for the child's development and engagement with the mathematics existing in childhood culture. Our assumption is that an important task for young children's education is to create a democratic and critical environment, in which multiplicity of…

Mathematics educators have shown increasing interest in theorizing knowing and learning as something alive or as something that comes alive through the involvement of the body. Almost all current efforts attempt doing so by focusing on the body in which the otherwise invisible living being exhibits itself, thereby failing to consider everything…

Skilled instructors observe consistent errors that young children may make in particular situations and seek ways to help children reform their thinking through conceptual understanding. Such teacher observations as those presented at the beginning of this article, combined with similar observations by teachers in other preschool and kindergarten…

Preparing children to be successful in mathematics begins with what they learn before they reach 1st grade. Math knowledge in prekindergarten and kindergarten predicts school achievement in math and in other topics, such as reading. Indeed, early math knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of math grades in high school, high school…

Narratives that capture children's learning as they go about their day-to-day activities are promoted as a powerful assessment tool within early childhood settings. However, in the New Zealand context, there is increasing concern that learning stories--the preferred form of narrative assessment--currently downplay domain knowledge. In this paper,…

In early childhood settings narratives that capture children's learning as they go about their day-to-day activities are promoted as a powerful assessment tool. However, in the New Zealand context there is increasing concern that learning stories currently downplay domain knowledge. Data from teacher interviews and samples of learning stories…

Research Findings: We evaluated the fidelity of implementation and the sustainability of effects of a research-based model for scaling up educational interventions. The model was implemented by 64 teachers in 26 schools in 2 distal city districts serving low-resource communities, with schools randomly assigned to condition. Practice or Policy:…

As an experienced educator of some 25 years, the author can appreciate the flexibility that emergent curriculum affords. The author has been able to integrate her background in fine art and love for storytelling easily into her day-to-day work. But sometimes projects take off in unexpected directions and when an exploration of boxes evolved into…

Could problem solving be the object of teaching in early education? Could appropriate teaching interventions develop to scaffold children's efforts to solve problems? These were the central questions of this article. The sample consisted of 18 children attending public pre-school in Cyprus. The problem they were asked to solve was to find all…

Research Findings: The present study involved using a questionnaire to investigate the mathematics teaching practices of 74 U.S. and 67 Chinese early childhood teachers. Quantitative and qualitative analyses yielded several key findings. First, U.S. teachers are less intentional in mathematics teaching than their Chinese counterparts.…