Research Question: How to support adults (parents and practitioners) in thinking about more open ways to play mathematically?
Researcher(s): Joanna Smith
Setting(s): The Southville Centre
Status: Ongoing
Joanna was inspired by the maths course at Redcliffe and felt challenged by the idea of not testing children with questions such as ‘how many’? Joanna would really like to move away from this culture and develop this with her team.
Joanna will be collecting examples of children’s play and from children exploring open maths opportunities that the adults have set up. Joanna is also crafting a questionnaire for parents and practitioners in the centre about what they think early maths is and fill this in before and after a workshop she leads with them.
A note about Practitioner led Mathematical Research 2017
The Bristol Early Years Consortium Maths SLEs have received funding from the Boolean Maths Hub to:
- Develop specialist subject knowledge of mathematics teaching.
- Develop pedagogical knowledge of mathematics teaching.
- Improve the quality of mathematics teaching.
- Develop confidence and resilience in learning mathematics.
The SLEs as research mentors are using research as a form of CPD to achieve the above aims.
The research participants have sculpted their own questions for their research and the SLEs will meet with the research participants 6 times a year and have whole research group meetings three times a year. There are 15 teacher/practitioner researchers who work with children from two years old to seven years old.
