Teacher perceptions of their professional knowledge, learning and practice: Insights into early number sense pedagogy.

Student mathematics underperformance across grade levels within Australian schools remains a growing concern. Current concerns regarding the quality of student learning and levels of achievement, position a strong focus on the quality of teacher preparation and practice. The development of sound number sense in the early years of school has been shown to be critical for ongoing learning and success in mathematics. Therefore, teachers of early mathematics play a vital role in building the foundational number knowledge on which children can build further understanding and competence. Previous research has established that young children who have under-developed number sense are at risk of continued underachievement, highlighting the importance of their teachers being equipped with deep knowledge of early number development and effective practices for early intervention. This study aimed to interpret how teachers acquire their knowledge and translate it into their core instructional practices for early mathematics teaching. The research was guided by a conceptual framework that links the key components of teacher knowledge, professional learningand teacher practicethrough the mediating process of teacher perception. The study focused on investigating the following questions: What knowledge for the teaching of number sense do teachers bring with them to their early learning classroom? How do teachers’ classroom practices address the learning needs of their students? How does teacher perception interrelate with teacher knowledge and their classroom practice? Underpinning the research design for this study were the characteristics of a naturalistic, inquiry research paradigm, where meaning arises out of real-life settings, (that is, classrooms), through an interpretative, sequential process. The participants in the collective case-studyapproach were three Kindergarten (first year of school in NSW) teachers from the same school. As a stimulus for the collection of rich qualitative data, the teachers engaged in a practice-based interconnected professional learningmodel (IPLM). Each of the four domains in the IPLM (design, enactment, analysis, reflection), became the structure for individual cycles of teaching. A series of recorded teacher interviews (including video-stimulated teacher reflection) and classroom observations over an intensive period of three weeks, was supplemented by student assessment data and field notes. Data collection began with an assessment to identify children in each class who were ‘at risk’ in number learning, to become the focus of later classroom observations. Transcripts of teacher interviews were analysed through a process of coding, ‘memo writing’, and supported by manual in-vivo coding. Classroom observational data were analysed using initial/open coding, axial coding and memo writing. Cross-case themes and a data reduction matrix were subsequently used to build a multiple case report, with an embedded single-case study for deeper analysis. While this study found that each of the three teacher participants presented reasonable pedagogical content knowledge within their teaching of early mathematics learning, their understanding of the need for a more specialised content knowledge or deeper subject matter knowledge was not always evident. All three teachers were driven by the curriculum content leaving a noticeable gap between the translation of formal knowledge into their own instructional practice. Professional knowledge was mostly acquired through their own teaching experiences. Each teacher’s own perception of their preparedness to teach early mathematics was found to drive their beliefs about the knowledge needed to teach mathematics. Teacher perception was also a key element in how the learning needs of their students were identified and approached. Instructional core practices were often generalised across whole class learning, being collective and repetitive rather than targeted. While there is much yet to learn about the complexities of how teachers translate their professional knowledge into instructional practice, this study has revealed the important role that teacher perception plays in the approaches that teachers use to translate their present knowledge into what they teach and how they teach it. A teacher’s perception of their own thinking, learning and practice was pivotal to the adoption of particular practices, how they viewed teaching outcomes, and their view of the role of teaching itself. These findings highlighted the importance of ongoing support for teachers in developing the specialised knowledge and the pedagogy needed to provide quality access to early learning experiences that are vital to their student’s foundational number skills, achievement and ongoing mathematics success