Young multilingual children encounter numbers - children and teacher communicate numbers in bilingual preschool

Children are surrounded by teachers who use language to explain the meaning of numbers, and thereby involve the children in making sense of mathematical principles. Arithmetical comprehension and proficiency is dependent on... [ view full abstract ]

Children are surrounded by teachers who use language to explain the meaning of numbers, and thereby involve the children in making sense of mathematical principles. Arithmetical comprehension and proficiency is dependent on children’s intuitive notion of numerical meanings, but how arithmetic knowledge is developed and used is determined largely by culture and teaching. This study thereby investigates how young, multilingual children deal with numbers’ part-whole relationship in an arithmetic task, by highlighting and discussing multilingual children´s use of two languages in math activities. A recent study shows that the teachers tend not to support young multilingual children to use other languages than majority language as a resource in communication. The interest in this study is therefore to investigate the learning opportunities that emerge when two languages are used in a learning situation about numbers. The study is designed within the theoretical frame of the Variation theory of learning, which emphasizes that serval aspects of a learning object need to be discerned by the child in order to develop a conceptual understanding of numbers. Data has been collected using video recording of a designed arithmetic task that two children (3.5 years) participate in together with their teacher, at 3-4 occasions. This study contributes to early childhood research by describing young children´s use of several languages to learn arithmetic skills. Focusing on the preschool math activities and the communication opportunities provides new perspectives for understanding young multilingual children’s learning (conditions) in preschool.

Keywords: Early childhood education · Numbers · Multilingual children · Variation theory.

The presentation is part of the Swedish National Research School on Communication and Relations as Foundations for Early Childhood Education (FoRFa), funded by the Swedish Research Council (grant no. 729-2013-6848).