Professional Tasks in Early Childhood Education Teacher Education: Promoting Reasoning at 0-3

Resumo

Background: Teacher training at all levels has been the subject of continuous study in recent decades, however, in the case of early childhood education, little research has been carried out to analyse the mathematical knowledge of prospective teachers. To characterise this knowledge, it is essential to organise professional tasks focused on recognising how future teachers learn to look at different teaching situations in a structured way. Objective: We intend to describe the design and validation of a professional task aimed at prospective teachers to observe, analyse, and reflect on real experiences of initiation to logical-mathematical reasoning in cycle 0-3 cycle. Design: The structuring of this professional task covered five stages: review of studies on mathematical construction in the cycle of 0-3 years of age; review of studies on the beginning of logical-mathematical reasoning; choice of narratives/videos to observe and analyse; implementation in a pilot group and initial analysis of the teaching competence, and redesign and construction of the final version of the task. Settings and Participants: The initial version is implemented with 37 prospective teachers of the early childhood education degree of a Catalan university. Data and analysis: Qualitative-interpretative research is carried out, analysing the written productions prepared by the prospective teachers, through content analysis. Results: The observations of the pilot study show that prospective teachers recognise how children identify and relate, but there are difficulties in identifying when children are operating. Conclusions: We found that the task designed allowed us to improve the knowledge of the prospective teachers on the reasoning in the 0-3 cycle and that the use of narratives is pertinent and enriching in the structuring of professional tasks.