This article describes how early childhood teachers engaged in a public preK professional development program. We examine how developing teacher identities mediated engagement with the discourses of developmentally appropriate practice, early mathematics, and funds of knowledge and how they connected present practice to an imagined future. We found that helping them to connect practice experience and new mathematical content knowledge through play allowed them to envision a meaningful place for math with young children. [teacher identity, early childhood, mathematics, funds of knowledge, identity in practice]Early childhood (EC) education is a hybrid space that spans multiple contexts, relies on diverse disciplines, and is populated by varied stakeholders. It includes policy and practice, caregivers and teachers, infants and eight year olds, families and educators, and it plays out in homes, childcare centers, Head Start, and elementary schools. These varied spaces carry with them different institutional histories, systems of thought, practices, and roles (Bloch 1987). Though loosely bound together by an interest in young children, the divergent needs and resources available to support its work fray the EC community's connections.The multiple faces of early childhood come together in sharp relief in the context of a relatively new policy option for children and families in the United States: public prekindergarten (preK). Based on 50 years of research on the critical nature of the preschool years for children's growth and development (Camilli et al. 2010;Gilliam and Zigler 2001), a growing number of states have invested in publicly funded programs for three and four year olds (Barnett et al. 2012). PreK programs represent the intersection of many EC practices-a mash up of preschool and K-12 education, spanning public and private contexts, sometimes targeted and other times universal, addressing kindergarten readiness through a focus on literacy and math, and/or social and emotional development (Zigler et al. 2011). These programs are often implemented by the state through local school districts, bringing together state education policy with elementary school bureaucracy in the context of preK sensibility.
