Children as Mathematicians: The Interplay between Discourse Structure, Mathematicising, and the Participatory Approach

Sinikka Kaartinen,Timo Latomaa

doi:10.5402/2012/509485

Abstract

This paper investigates the discourse structure, mathematicising and the participatory approach in an early education classroom community whose pedagogy in the learning of mathematics draws on the sociocultural perspective. The social interactions of the classroom community, as well as the role of pre-symbolic sign vehicles as semiotic tools in supporting interaction building, mathematicising, and strategy selection, were subjected to a qualitative micro-level analysis based on applied discourse and semiotic procedures. The results of the study suggest that the young children's mathematical ability develops during the two-year observation period from nonverbal participation to verbal participation through the following core elements: attention to numeracy, the learning of number words, object counting and mathematical story telling. The iconic and indexical pre-symbolic sign vehicles and semiotic chaining applied in the learning situations provide the learning community with the means to structure their experiences of their everyday practise and to relate them to the culture of mathematicising.

Highlights

A semiotic perspective has been applied in school contexts [1], and this study applies the semiotic perspective in early education classroom contexts
The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of iconic and indexical presymbolic sign vehicles [2] as semiotic tools in mediating children’s mathematicising in an early education classroom; the classroom in question is based on the idea of semiotic chaining and collective negotiation of mathematics in a community of learners [3]
This is important, since there has been criticism of the fact that activities of everyday practices differ radically from the mathematical activities of classroom practices [4]. In response to this criticism, this study applies semiotic chaining [5] with the help of properly selected sign vehicles as an instructional model to enhance young children’s mathematicising

Summary

Introduction

A semiotic perspective has been applied in school contexts [1], and this study applies the semiotic perspective in early education classroom contexts. This is important, since there has been criticism of the fact that activities of everyday practices differ radically from the mathematical activities of classroom practices [4] In response to this criticism, this study applies semiotic chaining [5] with the help of properly selected sign vehicles as an instructional model to enhance young children’s mathematicising. According to earlier research [6], the presence of semiotic tools in instruction and the availability of gestures enable children to communicate even prior to their imitation of the standard discourse of mathematics In this study, this was realized using iconic and indexical sign vehicles, called here presymbolic signs

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Conclusion