‘Let's Dance!’ Theorising Alternative Mathematical Practices in Early Childhood Teacher Education

Abstract

In light of the contemporary discussions on the biased relationship between gender and mathematical teaching and learning in the Western world, can we, by means of a reconceptualised early childhood education, influence how young children construct their gendered subjectivities in relation to mathematics? This project has been carried out with the aim of challenging the taken-for-granted mathematical teaching discourse and to produce more creative, in-depth and gender-sensitive mathematical learning situations for student teachers and their subsequent students in early childhood teacher education practices. To exemplify such work, from a data collection of 75 student reports, this article investigates and analyses documentation collected from a maths project undertaken by an early childhood education student teacher. The poststructural and material feminist analysis performed shows that the material-discursive intra-actions taking place are conceivable to have both expected and unexpected gendered impacts on children's ongoing subjectivity constructions. It also shows that it is difficult but possible to change taken-for-granted mathematical teaching practice as well as student teachers' understandings of maths teaching.