Preschool Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge Regarding the Concept of Numbers

Abstract

The current study examines preschool teachers' pedagogical content knowledge of number concepts (counting principles) and relationships between numbers (part-whole relation and subitizing) from the perspectives of knowledge of student, knowledge of teaching, and knowledge of curriculum. The study makes use of qualitative research method, for which data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with nine preschool teachers with varying years of experience in the field. The data were analysed using a content analysis method, and the results were divided into three categories: student knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and curriculum knowledge. The results showed that preschool teachers valued counting principles in mathematics classes and frequently incorporated game-integrated activities into their lessons to help students with counting. The most emphasized student errors by preschool teachers were one-to-one correspondence and the principle of cardinality. The results further suggested that teachers lacked pedagogical content knowledge of the part-whole relationship because they could only connect it to addition and skip counting. They interpreted the part-to-whole relationship of numbers as equal sharing, it was further discovered. It was worthy of note that the participants did not mention subitizing, or conceptual and perceptual subitizing, but managed to list the features of subitizing accurately while talking about the examples given. In order to improve teachers' pedagogical content knowledge, in-service seminars or trainings can be organized that emphasize the relationships between numbers (part-whole relationship, subitizing, etc.).