Chinese teachers’ beliefs, confidence and practices in teaching early childhood mathematics

Abstract

Significance, Purpose, and Research Questions The role of early childhood teachers in supporting children’s math learning during everyday activities through appropriate approaches and effective strategies has become increasingly important. However, many early childhood teachers are not well prepared for helping children learn math due to lack of knowledge and effective strategies. In mainland China, early childhood teachers’ beliefs and practices in math teaching remain under-explored. With limited understanding of teachers’ beliefs and practices, it is difficult for teacher preparation, professional development programmes and preschool administrators to provided teachers with necessary support. To fill the current research gaps, this study aimed to investigate Chinese early childhood teachers’ beliefs about appropriate math teaching, self-reported math teaching practices as well as teachers’ confidence in helping young children learn math and explore the relationship of these three areas. Three research questions were developed: 1. What are early childhood teachers’ beliefs about appropriate early math teaching and self-reported math teaching practices?

2. How confident are Chinese early childhood teachers about their knowledge and abilities to teach early math? 3. What are the relationships between teachers’ self-reported beliefs, practices and confidence in teaching early math? Methods One hundred and twelve early childhood teachers were recruited from 33 public kindergartens in Zhejiang province. The majority of the participants were females (96.4%) and had a bachelor’s degree (79.46%). The age of participants ranged from 21 to 54 years old (M=31.09,SD=7.50). Teachers had a wide range of teaching experience from 0.33 to 33.67 years (M=9.01,SD=8.37). Only 27% of teachers reported they had received in-service training on early math teaching. A questionnaire consisted of three 6-point Likert sub-scales was used to collect data. Items for measuring teachers’ appropriate math teaching beliefs, practices and confidence in teaching math were developed and adopted from NAEYC’s guidelines and Chen, McCray, Adams and Leow (2014), respectively. The Cronbach’s Alpha for teachers’ belief, practice and confidence statements was .81, .89 and .88. Descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) were used to answer research question one and two; inferential statistics (correlations, regression) were usedto address research question three. Results and Implications Preliminary results indicate a large majority of teachers believed all the recommended math teaching approaches were important (M=5.13,SD=.83) and reported a relatively high frequency of usingappropriate math teaching approaches (M=4.93,SD=.93). Teachers’ ratings on items about their confidence in teaching math (M=4.70,SD=1.60) were lower. Specifically, teachers’ confidence in their knowledge (M=4.55) was significantly lower than their confidence in abilities (M=4.86) (t =−5.11,