Abstract:

Responding to the scarcity of research on early mathematics teaching profiles, this article reports on a novel assessment approach to identifying characteristics of early mathematics teaching occurring in early childhood settings. The new approach uses the interplay between teachers’ content knowledge in mathematics, knowledge of students and learning, and knowledge of how to teach mathematics effectively during the course of early mathematics as a proxy to identify quality of mathematics instruction provided. In this study, 210 pre -kindergarten to 3rd grade teachers in a large public school system in the Midwest were observed as they taught mathematics. The descriptive results revealed that the quality of mathematics instruction varies considerably among early childhood teachers. Some teachers are identified as delivering high quality mathematics instruction because they provide students with opportunities to fully and purposefully engage in deepening their understanding of important mathematics concepts, whereas others are rated as far lower in quality, because their mathematics teaching is procedural in terms of content emphasized and instructional strategies used. As a whole, observed quality of mathematics teaching was revealed to be mediocre. Implications of results for early math professional development are discussed. 

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