- Title
- An investigation of the initiation process of pre-school children into the culture of a formal mathematics education program in the first year at school
- Creator
- Macmillan, Agnes Jean
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 1997
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- The study examined how young children are affected by the change from informal pre-school environments to the al learning environments of first-year-at-school mathematics education programs. Two pre-school sites and two school sites in the Hunter Region of New South Wales (Australia) were used for non-participant and participant observations, which occurred towards the end of 1994 and in he first two terms of 1995. The concerns of the investigation encompassed the broad socio-political factors influencing educational philosophies and practices in both precompulsory schooling and primary school systems. The analysis of data in the thesis is from semiotic and socio-linguist perspectives, with an emphasis on how young children develop a register of mathematics. The thesis examines unconscious and metacognitive mechanisms which affect early learning. A post-structuralist analytical framework encompasses socio-cultural issues in learning contexts, and elaborates and explores significant meanings and relationships concerning the development of social representation systems leading to self-agency and identity development. The study focuses on the issue of whether continuity existed between the two systems of pre-compulsory and primary schooling. Bishop's (1988) six "universal" mathematics activities were used as a basis for analysing the children's discourses. Halliday's (1994) systemic functional grammar was used to analyse the instructional formats at one of the school sites. A major finding of the study was that the issues of access and equity were highly relevant to the development of co-participative, negotiable, and responsibly self-regulative frameworks for interpersonal relationships in both kinds of learning environments. Opportunities to exchange communication roles protected and nurtured young children's needs for security, self-agency and the fulfilment of growth goals. Despite the complexity and delicacy of many of the issues being explored, the tensions associated with creating a balance of child-centred and teacher-directed approaches in both systems, and the difficulties of establishing negotiability in power-knowledge relationships, the analyses and discussions of the children's and teachers' discourses suggested that only slight changes would need to be made in each system to continue working towards an inclusive early learning mathematics education curriculum.
- Subject
- pre-school; mathematics; education
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1312521
- Identifier
- uon:22417
- Rights
- Copyright 1997 Agnes Jean Macmillan
- Language
- eng
- Hits: 1425
- Visitors: 1393
- Downloads: 0