This research explored the nuances of co-creating and implementing a co-constructed and re-conceptualized Kindergarten mathematics curriculum including innovative teaching practices such as number talks, math baskets, and counting collections to examine their impact on a student's mathematical identity, mindset, and content knowledge. The goal of this research was to provide a counter-story on mathematics curriculum in an early elementary classroom setting with a focus on social justice and equity. The project employed qualitative methodologies using a bricolage approach. A critical theoretical framework and related postdiscourses guided my research design, data collection, and analysis. Data sources for this study included a reflective journal kept by myself as a teacher-researcher focused on mathematical curriculum experiences, semi-structured focus group discussions with students, and electronic student artifacts collected over a twelve-week period in the late fall and winter of a school year. Data was analyzed using open and thematic coding. The major themes that emerged were used to create a community autoethnographic narrative via a bricolage of vignettes. The large and overarching theme of social justice and equity permeated the research findings in connection with students establishing a mathematical identity and mathematical mindset. Other themes included: (a) "growing out math brains"; (b) culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP); (c) operating as a community of learners; (d) students taking ownership of their mathematical learning; (e) teacher as ethnographer, facilitator and co-creator of learning; (f) making math meaningful and tangible; (g) play, enjoyment, and fun during math learning; and (h) meeting or exceeding standards with a localized curriculum in lieu of following a standardized curriculum. The vignettes and subsequent analyses are not intended to be a replicable mathematics curriculum for Kindergarten students. Rather, the vignettes are intended to inspire teachers to reconceptualize mathematics curriculums that influence their young students' mathematical identities. It is suggested that a reconceptualized and co-constructed mathematical curriculum will have a lasting influence on the mathematical mindset and identities of young students. Keywords: reconceptualized mathematics curriculum; mathematical identity; mathematical mindset; number talks; math baskets; criticalism; social justice and equity; bricolage; community autoethnography; Kindergarten; early childhood education.

This book emanated primarily from concerns that the mathematical capabilities of young children continue to receive inadequate attention in both the research and instructional arenas. Research over many years has revealed that young children have sophisticated mathematical minds and a natural eagerness to engage in a range of mathematical activities. As the chapters in this book attest, current research is showing that young children are developing complex mathematical knowledge and abstract reasoning a good deal earlier than previously thought. A range of studies in prior to school and early school settings indicate that young learners do possess cognitive capacities which, with appropriately designed and implemented learning experiences, can enable forms of reasoning not typically seen in the early years. Although there is a large and coherent body of research on individual content domains such as counting and arithmetic, there have been remarkably few studies that have attempted to describe characteristics of structural development in young students’ mathematics. Collectively, the chapters highlight the importance of providing more exciting, relevant, and challenging 21st century mathematics learning for our young students. The chapters provide a broad scope in their topics and approaches to advancing young children’s mathematical learning. They incorporate studies that highlight the importance of pattern and structure across the curriculum, studies that target particular content such as statistics, early algebra, and beginning number, and studies that consider how technology and other tools can facilitate early mathematical development. Reconceptualising the professional learning of teachers in promoting young children’s mathematics, including a consideration of the role of play, is also addressed.

Early childhood mathematics is vitally important for young children's present and future educational success. Research demonstrates that virtually all young children have the capability to learn and become competent in mathematics. Furthermore, young children enjoy their early informal experiences with mathematics. Unfortunately, many children's potential in mathematics is not fully realized, especially those children who are economically disadvantaged. This is due, in part, to a lack of opportunities to learn mathematics in early childhood settings or through everyday experiences in the home and in their communities. Improvements in early childhood mathematics education can provide young children with the foundation for school success. Relying on a comprehensive review of the research, Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood lays out the critical areas that should be the focus of young children's early mathematics education, explores the extent to which they are currently being incorporated in early childhood settings, and identifies the changes needed to improve the quality of mathematics experiences for young children. This book serves as a call to action to improve the state of early childhood mathematics. It will be especially useful for policy makers and practitioners-those who work directly with children and their families in shaping the policies that affect the education of young children.

"This book is about how to create invitations for young children to play with math ideas through art, literacy, and outdoor play. The focus of her book is really on math that occurs OUTSIDE of math time. How can we create space for children to play in our classrooms that builds on their own questions as well as the math they are studying in the curriculum? How can we create a joyful and playful space for math so that children feel like mathematical thinkers with valuable ideas from the very start? How can we create connections between math and children's lives so that they see math as creative and purposeful instead of just learning "school math"?"--

As a dedicated early childhood teacher, you aim to provide an environment where students make new discoveries and test their limits. But when it comes to teaching developmentally appropriate math, you might welcome help from an expert with teaching experience based on the latest research on math learning. Math at Their Own Pace offers a series of predesigned, inexpensive activities that you can create and place "on the shelf" for children to use when they are developmentally ready and interested. This child-directed approach provides a broad range of hands-on math experiences that will help your students learn to solve problems creatively. Math at Their Own Pace covers: awareness of stable quantities and emergence of counting skills recognizing and writing the numerals 0 though 9 counting to 10 and beyond emergence of whole-part awareness Greg Nelson, PhD, is a professor of early childhood education at Bridgewater State College in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and has been a lead teacher in a Montessori program. He holds a PhD in educational psychology, human development, and cognition.

This important new book synthesizes relevant research on the learning of mathematics from birth into the primary grades from the full range of these complementary perspectives. At the core of early math experts Julie Sarama and Douglas Clements's theoretical and empirical frameworks are learning trajectories—detailed descriptions of children’s thinking as they learn to achieve specific goals in a mathematical domain, alongside a related set of instructional tasks designed to engender those mental processes and move children through a developmental progression of levels of thinking. Rooted in basic issues of thinking, learning, and teaching, this groundbreaking body of research illuminates foundational topics on the learning of mathematics with practical and theoretical implications for all ages. Those implications are especially important in addressing equity concerns, as understanding the level of thinking of the class and the individuals within it, is key in serving the needs of all children.

Responding to their recent research on how children learn mathematics, the authors have revised this bestselling textbook to provide practical advice on what works and what should be avoided when teaching second graders. Features important revisions to their groundbreaking program, including the harmful effects of teaching "carrying' and "borrowing".