The Early Childhood Australia website was interesting to look at. I wanted to read an article about Tony Abbott who is the Leader of the Opposition in the Australian House of Representatives, the article was Tony Abbott misses the point on early childhood education and care reform. I wanted to know what his stand was on early childhood education and care reform. Another topic that was covered was challenges of implementing primary arts education and what the teachers had to say. The topic that I thought would be of interest was Early childhood teachers misconception about mathematics education for young children in the United States. I thought that it would be interesting to see how I can see this from a different point of view. Looking at it as a student and then as an American looking at what Australians think about American students and teachers. The article talks about 9 misconceptions about teaching children math here in the United States. I was surprised by some of the ideals that they listed. There were many questions that came to mind from taking this course, who were the participates and how did they gather their data. To briefly tell you about the misconception I will just run down the list. 1. young children are not ready for math education, 2. math is for some bright kids, 3. simple numbers and shapes are enough, 4. language and literacy are more important than math, 5. teachers should provide an enriched physical environment, step back and let the children play, 6. math should not be taught as a stand-alone subject matter, 7. assessment in math is irrelevant, 8. children learn math only by interacting with concrete objects, and the last 9. computers are inappropriate for teaching and learning of math. As I was reading I could see where these ideals came from, it was stated that they did research in different way, interviews, and workshops, it did not say where the teachers where from. I admit I am one of those people that does not like math and there seems to be a larger number of teachers that math is not their favorite subject either. One thing that I read that really caught my eye was " Teacher's were cautioned that purposefully teaching mathematics was unnecessary, inappropriate, or even harmful to young children(e.g. Elkind, 1981, 1998)". Is that a true statement?
Politics is the same everywhere. I had to go to Google and read about Tony Abbott I did not find the article about what his views are on early childhood education, I just found out that his wife had to defend him about his view on women and their issues. Sound familiar? The issues seem to be the same the world over.
Hello. First I'd like to say I like the font, very pretty.
ReplyDeleteAs for teaching math to young kids --- i feel like it is built into what we teach them anyways. Like when they line things up or sort things, or count, all those things are math concepts. However I can understand that trying to teach 2 year olds deliberate addition problems or something could be bad.
Hello Carmellia,
ReplyDeleteI was also interested in the Early Childhood Australia website. It caught my attention that they had so much good information about the field. I found many of their research topics and links very interesting and similar to what we are interested here in USA. I also read the article about misconceptions about teaching children mathematics in the United States. I partially agree with some of their statements because I have witnessed teachers in the early childhood field struggle with this subject. However, I believe that this weakness has been identified and that there are more training and professional development activities available to teach teachers how to include this subject in their early childhood curriculum.