This paper discusses how preschool teachers struggled to recognise children participating in Playing as a mathematical activity after they had participated in a professionaldevelopment course which included tasks on this. Indeed, Playing as a mathematical activity and play as the basis for learning are contrasted in order to better understand why this lack of recognition occurs. The results of this study have wider implication for professional development programmes including the importance of broadening teachers’ understanding of mathematics.

Cet article aborde la difficulté des enseignants de maternelle à reconnaître les enfants participant au jeu comme activité mathématique, même après avoir suivi une formation professionnelle incluant des tâches sur ce sujet. En effet, le jeu en tant qu'activité mathématique et le jeu en tant que base de l'apprentissage sont mis en contraste afin de mieux comprendre pourquoi ce manque de reconnaissance se produit. Les résultats de cette étude ont des implications plus larges pour les programmes de développement professionnel, notamment l'importance d'élargir la compréhension des enseignants en matière de mathématiques

Young children often engage with commercial toys, many of which are now connected to a television or online video program that the children (and their caregivers) can watch. Children who are preverbal are often engaged (and targeted) with these toys, benefitting with a range of learnings and demonstrations of understandings. This paper uses 360-degree videos to explore the learnings and understandings demonstrated when a preverbal child engages with a commercial toy with an educator. The 360-degree video shows the preverbal child’s behaviours, both in response to the educator’s speech and actions and self-initiated. Children were observed engaged in events, made up of behaviours that were delineated into actions to help the researchers identify what mathematical exploration and understandings each child may demonstrate. Of particular interest is the mathematical understandings and exploration that the child may demonstrated via their actions.

Inspired by Sfard we investigate the stories of teaching and learning situations using two different theories. We look at how the stories that the two theories tell are the same or different in order to answer the question about what can be gained and what will be lost when using two different theories in this case variation theory and pedagogical strategies. This is done using a video from a mathematics lesson in preschool class setting, 6-year-old children as a base and then comparing the stories that the two different theories tell about this situation.

This paper draws on data from a quantitative study of upper secondary students' general mathematical self-efficacy, anxiety towards mathematics, and their relationship to achievement in mathematics. The main objective of this article is to discuss the type of information that may be lost if potential problems of validity and extreme multicollinearity in exploratory factor analysis would be solved by only removing variables without doing a profound analysis. We also describe a method that treats Likert items in the questionnaire as ordinal variables that may represent the underlying continuous variable. Our study shows, for example, that removal of problematic variables without a profound analysis leads to a loss of significant information about test anxiety. Our qualitative analysis of problematic variables also led to an unexpected finding regarding the relationship between general mathematical self-efficacy and motivational values in mathematics.

This article reports on how a group of preschool and primary student teachers define the concept “teaching mathematics in preschool” in the beginning of their studies. The background for this pilot-study is the recent change in the Swedish curriculum, which means a shift from play-based to more teaching oriented activities, and the actual Swedish debate on the role of teaching in preschool.

We examine university students’ motivation and self-efficacy beliefs about proof and proving, i.e., beliefs about personal abilities to understand, construct and present mathematical proofs, as well as their certainty about self-produced proofs. The sample of the study consists of 29 Finnish and Swedish students who were studying mathematics in tertiary level. The results show that the students were highly motivated to learn to understand and construct proofs, but they were more uncertain about their proving skills. Moreover, the study revealed reasons for the uncertainty about proving achievements. Most of the reasons are caused bydeficiencies with respect to knowledge of, understanding about or experience from proof and proving.

This article reports on an educational design research study exploring the potential of combining entrepreneurship and mathematics – two of the key competencies stressed as important in a society of lifelong learning. The aim of the study was to explore what happens when entrepreneurship is integrated into mathematics lessons. Eight Swedish primary schools were involved in the iterative design wherein researchers and teachers together planned, implemented, and evaluated lessons. The results indicate that combining entrepreneurial and mathematical competencies may produce a win-win situation. Entrepreneurial competencies can be of value when students are learning mathematics, and at the same time mathematics teaching can be organised so that students develop both mathematical and entrepreneurial competencies.

In this paper we describe stories of mathematics learning in play that are often neglected in this era of schoolification and discussions of what counts as learning in early childhood. Drawing on theories of early childhood teaching and learning that emphasize the importance of teachers’ (a) content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and knowledge of children’s development, (b) action competencies, and (c) attitudes and beliefs, we explore three stories of child-teacher interactions in play. We found that, despite different political and public perceptions of what counts as learning in three different countries, preschool teachers evidenced competencies in similar ways – each illustrating a neglected story of children’s mathematics learning.

Our study surveys Swedish primary and preprimary student teachers' (n=94) views of content and methods of mathematics education in preschool and, especially, of using digital tools in preprimary mathematics education. The views related to digital tools turned out to be clearly positive in general. Students who are strongly for using digital tools are also more sure in saying that mathematics education in preschool should be fun. However, they agree less with the claims such as mathematics lessons should be structured, or that the responsibility for the mathematics education of small children belongs mainly to their parents. Those students who were quite strongly for using digital tools agreed less with the claim that mathematics is one of the most important areas of preprimary education. The willingness to take responsibility for children's mathematical education from the parents was the most significant single factor to explain the participants' opinions about using digital tools.