The developmentally appropriate teaching of data collection and analysis: What do preschool teachers think?
Abstract: This project aims to promote preschoolers’ engagement with and learning of mathematics and computational thinking (CT) with a set of classroom activities that engage preschoolers in a data collection and analysis (DCA) process. To do this, the project team is engaging in an iterative cycle of development and testing of hands-on and play-based curricular investigations. A key component of the project is a teacher-facing digital app (for teachers to use with students on touch-screen tablets) to support the collaboration of preschool teachers and children in collecting data, creating simple graphs, and using the graphs to answer real-world questions. In the first phase of the project, researchers conducted a formative interview and survey study with preschool teachers to elicit feedback on the extent to which the investigations and a teacher-facing digital app are developmentally appropriate and feasible to implement in classrooms. This study was the first in a series of studies in the project’s overall design-based research and development process. The proposed presentation will discuss the problem this project addresses and present the main findings that emerged from the study.
Presider: Dina Rosen, Kean University