In light of the contemporary discussions on the biased relationship between gender and mathematical teaching and learning in the Western world, can we, by means of a reconceptualised early childhood education, influence how young children construct their gendered subjectivities in relation to mathematics? This project has been carried out with the aim of challenging the taken-for-granted mathematical teaching discourse and to produce more creative, in-depth and gender-sensitive mathematical learning situations for student teachers and their subsequent students in early childhood teacher education practices. To exemplify such work, from a data collection of 75 student reports, this article investigates and analyses documentation collected from a maths project undertaken by an early childhood education student teacher. The poststructural and material feminist analysis performed shows that the material-discursive intra-actions taking place are conceivable to have both expected and unexpected gendered impacts on children's ongoing subjectivity constructions. It also shows that it is difficult but possible to change taken-for-granted mathematical teaching practice as well as student teachers' understandings of maths teaching. |
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ANNA PALMER (2010) 'Let's Dance!' Theorising Alternative Mathematical Practices in Early Childhood Teacher Education, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 11(2), 130-143. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2010.11.2.130 |
