Part 3: Quality Interactions to Support Learning

Part 3: Quality interactions to support learning

Start Slide 7

Quality interactions that support learning (CLASS; Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008)

Three domains: Emotional Support, Classroom Organisation, Instructional Support

Concept development –to promote higher order thinking through analysis and reasoning, concept acquisition and application

Quality of Feedback –to expand learning and prompt thinking

Language modelling–language stimulation and facilitation

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Caroline: What we’re going to think about next is the quality of interactions that support learning. This particular model of interactions has three key domains: emotional support; classroom organisation: and instructional support. We know from the E4Kids study, which is the biggest longitudinal study that’s been conducted in Australia to look at the effect of early education experiences, that early childhood educators tend to enact emotional support very well, and classroom organisation very well, but instructional support is very tricky. Instructional support as a domain in this particular model includes concept development (where educators promote higher-order thinking through analysis and reasoning, concept acquisition and application), quality of feedback (which doesn’t mean ‘well done that’s lovely’, it means you provide feedback that expands learning and prompts higher-order thinking); and language modelling (which means language stimulation and facilitation).

Caroline: What I hope you’ll see from those three domains, with the three dimensions, is how they link back to what Mary said at the start of the presentation, using the Epstein quotation, and focussing specifically on mathematical teaching in early childhood. Educators need to have discipline knowledge; they need to have knowledge of typical development; and they also need to have a toolbox of appropriate strategies to support learning and development.

Caroline: So we need to be on top of these three key elements of what we call pedagogical content knowledge in order to be able to respond intentionally to everyday opportunities to support children’s mathematical thinking, whether those present spontaneously, or whether they are planned learning experiences that are being enacted in the room.

Start Slide 8

Why? Theory and research

• Mathematics learning starts at home and continues through EC education, school education and beyond.
• It builds simultaneously in counting, patterning, measurement, shape and spatial thinking, and using data to solve a problem.
• Children show mathematical thinking in diverse ways. We need to encourage them to do this, and to explain their thinking to us.
• If we miss seeing mathematical thinking when it occurs, we miss opportunities to scaffold their thinking and to use language to extend learning.
• This is important because children’s learning is influenced by the environment and we are an important part of that environment.

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Caroline:So we’re going to move briefly through some theory and research, and then we’re going to, at the end of this short section, is have another look at the video, the same video, and see whether having a bit more has to what it is the educator is setting out to achieve, in this learning experience with the children, enables you to see more mathematical teaching and learning happening, in the video.

Maths learning starts at home from the very, very early years and continues through early childhood education, through school education, and beyond. What that requires, however, is for the early childhood educator to actually mathematise the thinking that children are demonstrating. So if they have three strollers and they are putting one doll in each stroller, the early childhood educator will realise that the child is demonstrating one-to-one correspondence, but we need to actually know what it is in order to see it happening. When we talk about maths learning continuing right through our lives, anybody who has either taught a child to drive a car, or has learnt to drive a car themselves, will recognise that spatial thinking is something that has to be acquired – knowing where those pillars are in relation to you, and where they are in relation to each other – that kind of learning is happening all the time, and we know that it’s based on experience. So it’s based on the opportunities that we have as people – whether we are children or adults – to engage in that type of thinking.

Children’s mathematical thinking doesn’t happen first in numbering and counting and then in patterning, and then in shape recognition and then in data analysis. We know as educators that they are engaging in this type of thinking all the time across multiple strands, almost simultaneously. So, we’re counting to see who’s got more fruit on their plate, during the same morning that we’re comparing who has the most playdough, or who’s driving the fastest. But again, these are mathematical ideas, that if we mathematize them when we see them happening, we recognise then how the mathematical thinking and learning, or the scope to consolidate and extend it, is presenting itself constantly in an integrated program.

Children show their thinking in diverse ways. We too, as well, move away from thinking that children’s mathematical thinking is necessarily going to be verbalised. We see children demonstrating mathematical thinking through dance, through gesture, through a huge range of ways that may be unexpected to us. I’m thinking specifically now of one instance where a child demonstrated their understanding of increasing quantity, by drawing the volume that they are used to seeing on their computer screen when they turn up the sound,. So we see that children are experiencing diverse ways of thinking and being in their world, which is what we would expect, because every child has a different lived experience. What we need to be, as educators, is recognising what those core concepts are so that we see them when they happen, and the respond to them in ways that are going to support every individual child.

If we miss seeing it, we’re missing out on those opportunities to respond to children. Sometimes I hear people saying: ‘Maths teaching happens later; that’s for when they’re at school.’ But we know that children are doing this kind of thinking – or using mathematical thinking to solve problems – from when they’re very young and what we need to be, as educators, is attuned to it, so that we can scaffold it, and also provide the language that helps them to communicate their thinking to us. I use ‘language’ there loosely. We need to provide them with the tools that they use, in order to communicate their thinking to us.

All of this is important, because children’s learning, as all of us know, is heavily influenced by the environment. As professional educators, we’re part of that environment; so as Mary said, the VEYLDF is mandated by the National Quality Standards. We have to do this; it’s part of our professional responsibility. It’s not a matter of being able to say: ‘I don’t feel comfortable with maths. I don’t want to go there. I’d rather focus on literacy. We have to actually do this, so what we’re hoping is that the work we’re doing will help you do is recognise that continuum of learning, and help you to resource the information that you need to support your own practice.

Start Slide 9

What? Specific goals

• Names of shapes – and recognition of variations of the same type of shape
• Defining attributes of objects and shapes
• Positional and directional language
• Spatial relationships
• Transforming objects and symmetry
• Visualisation and spatial reasoning
• Encouraging children to explain their thinking

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Caroline: If we’re looking at spatial thinking – remember we picked spatial thinking because there was a limit to how much we were able to discuss in one session – if we are thinking about shape and spatial thinking, we’d be looking at names of shapes, and recognition of variations of the same type of shape, as Mary said. We’d be looking at defining attributes of objects: What makes a triangle a triangle? We’d be looking at positional and directional language – and this is always a great point to note the overlap between literacy and numeracy, so while we might be talking about prepositions if we’re talking about literacy (like over, under, through, between) these are mathematical concepts as well.

Spatial relationships: where things are in relation to us, where things are in relation to each other, and how we describe that, how children describe that. Transforming objects and symmetry: a really straightforward example of one of these is when children are doing puzzles – the notion that a shape doesn’t change depending on whether it’s slid or rotated or flipped, the shape remains the same.

Visualisation and spatial reasoning – there’s sometimes a misconception that children need to only see things in front of them, in order to be able to think about them and describe them. But we know that children can engage in visualising concepts and objects, if we think of an example, perhaps, of a shape being drawn on the floor, and how if you walked around it, the shape would look different depending on where you were in position to the shape; but the shape itself doesn’t alter. I can pretty much guarantee everybody was visualising that as I describing it, in order to understand what I was talking about. Children do that as well. This last one is really important as educators – encouraging children to demonstrate their thinking to us in some way, because it’s when children demonstrate what they understand, that we are able to assess that, and then decide on the ‘what-next’ step. If we don’t tap into what it is children know already, we may be planning learning experiences that are too easy, and the children will be disinterested. We might be pitching them beyond their ZPD (zone of proximal development) and we lose children then because they choose not to engage because it’s too difficult. What that also flags is the scope there with that latter example, to contribute to maths anxiety. Many people in our audience will hear that we are going to talk about maths, and your toes curl up. But it’s really important for us to be supporting children’s mathematical thinking in a way that makes it fun, as a resource for solving problems, as language for describing, explaining and making sense of the world.

So let’s have another look at the video, and see whether you see more mathematical thinking, now that we are having a second go.

Start Slide 10

Video 1 – text about the video

A group of children are sitting in a circle – the educator is also sitting in the circle. They are looking at a map of the garden around their centre. The educator asks a child to find something in the yard. The child suggests the ‘rock pit’ and looks for it on the map. They discuss where it is in relation to some trees. When the child can’t find it on the map, the educator suggests the child go outside (with another child) to check where the rock pit is. When the children return, the educator finishes a conversation with the children who remained in the room. The children who returned discuss the position of the rock pit in relation to the trees. After studying the map, they are able to point to the rock pit on the map.

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End of Part 3

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