Challenges and Opportunities of Mathematics in Digital Times: Preschool Teachers’ Views

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented crisis. Worldwide, preschool teachers were invited to develop the students’ learning experience in a new digital environment for mathematics. This research investigates preschool teachers’ mathematics practices during remote teaching and the use of digital tools in teaching mathematics after their return to actual classes. Views from sixteen Greek preschool teachers were collected with semi-structured interviews and analyzed using thematic analysis. The results showed that mathematical activities such as Numbers and Operations, Geometry, and Measurement occurred during distance learning in digital preschool classrooms. They made little reference to activities related to Algebra, while they did not refer to Data Analysis and Probability. They also seemed to prefer mathematical activities based on Connections and Representation processes in their digital classrooms. Preschool teachers reported that parents supported this process by their presence, and digital learning communities supported learning activities by providing guidelines and innovative approaches to them in digital times. However, after returning to face-to-face schooling, preschool teachers seemed to use digital tools to a lesser degree. They also mention that in face-to-face schooling, they prefer to utilize the authentic communication frameworks emphasizing problem-solving activities to enhance all mathematical processes. Implications for preschool teacher professional development are discussed.

Interviewing preschool children in Greece about their usage of mobile devices at home

“…They could design proper activities in which preschoolers would use mobile devices, combining in this way children’s entertainment and education. Mobile devices can be a teaching tool in the teacher’s or parent’s hands, as the current experience of distance learning, due to the Covid-19 pandemic has indicated (Apostolou and Lavidas 2021 ; Lavidas et al 2022 ). Some training for parents and teachers on the educational use of mobile devices may be necessary.…”

Understanding and uses of collaborative tools for online courses in higher education

“…The world has become a global village as a result of the ICT revolution (Can & Bardakci, 2022;Lavidas et al, 2022). Globally, digital learning platforms and tools play a significant role in higher education Mohammed, 2022;Papadakis, 2022).…”

Mathematical and computational awareness before and after the pandemic

“…Several articles can be found on emergency remote teaching, which report on the technical and psychological difficulties experienced in the pandemic, mostly from personal accounts or surveys, from the perspective of both teachers and students (Chmielewska et al, 2020;Nilsberth et al, 2021;Sofianidis et al, 2021;Can and Bardakci, 2022;Karakose et al, 2022a,b;Lavidas et al, 2022). It is also often stated that the pandemic brought to the surface many of the problems we had already perceived in traditional education, but there was no urgency to handle (Nilsberth et al, 2021).…”

“…There are questionnaire-based research studies on the difficulties of teaching in different age-groups from the kindergarten children (Gares et al, 2020;Karakose et al, 2021;Nilsberth et al, 2021;Sofianidis et al, 2021;Lavidas et al, 2022) to university students. Some of them are about the afterlife of methods during the pandemic as well.…”

“…Examining learning environments, Lavidas et al (2022) showed that although excellent, easily accessible online teaching materials for the preschool age-group were already available, not many kindergarten teachers had incorporated them into distance education, and even fewer of them would like to continue using them in classroom education, unlike in primary and secondary schools and higher education.…”