Although early childhood curricula in the Nordic countries require the use of digital technologies with young children, there has been much discussion about their value, both within the early childhood education field and the wider society. In this paper, we describe the similarities and differences between Norwegian and Swedish preservice teachers’ responses to an online survey about integrating digital technologies into young children’s mathematical explorations. Our analysis shows that preservice teachers in Norway and Sweden had different experiences with using digital technologies in ECEC. However, these experiences seem to have only some effect on their responses to how digital technologies can be used with children to explore mathematical ideas. Similarly, different emphases in the curricula and the social debates about using digital technologies in the two countries only seemed to affect some results.

With the inclusion of digital technologies in the Norwegian curriculum as a way that teachers canengage young children, including with mathematics, there is a need for teacher educators tounderstand how to educate preservice teachers to do this. A survey of 100 Norwegian preserviceteachers provided insights into whether seeing digital tools being used on practicum affected theirviews about using digital technologies to engage children with mathematics. The results show fewdifferences in responses between the groups. If anything, seeing digital technologies being used onpracticum seemed to make the preservice teachers more uncertain about their inclusion. Thissuggests that teacher education courses need to include more input into how digital technologiescould be used creatively and in play to engage young children with mathematical ideas.

The aim of this workshop is to explore how collages could function as a research methodology that takes seriously power issues connected to hierarchies, by increasing multivocality and pluralism, in order to facilitate dialogue. In small groups, the participants will explore and respond to some collages that teacher educators have created about their desires for mathematics education in migration contexts. The workshop will focus on the following questions, a) how and what desires can be interpreted in the collages? and b) therefore are collages an ethical research method for co-constructing dialogues?

Immigrant parents' views about mathematics education are rarely investigated, yet these are likely to affect their relationship to early childhood education and care (ECEC) and potentially their adopted country. In this study, Polish parents, who had immigrated to Norway, were surveyed about their views about mathematics education for young children, including what was made available in ECEC institutions in Poland and in Norway. We investigated whether the responses showed that parents' views about what is mathematics in early childhood and how it should be taught or learnt could be related to parents' considerations of the power and authority linked to their position as immigrants. The results have implications for multicultural ECEC and policy makers.

Although group work is considered beneficial for problem solving, the listening that is needed for jointly solving mathematical problems is under-researched. In this article, the usefulness of two communication frameworks for understanding students' listening is examined, using data from an educational design research study in an upper secondary mathematics classroom in Sweden. From the analysis, it was apparent that these frameworks did not provide sufficient information about the complexity of listening in this context. Consequently, a new framework, "productive listening, " is described which focuses on observable features connected to students' ability to show willingness to listen and to request listening from others. This framework included the purpose for listening, connected to problem-solving stages, and social aspects to do with respecting the speaker's contribution as being valuable and feeling that one's own contribution would be listened to. These two aspects are linked to socio-mathematical norms about expecting to listen to others' mathematical thinking and to ask clarifying questions about this thinking. By using this framework on the data from the earlier study, it was possible to better understand the complexity of listening in group work about mathematical problem solving.

In this chapter, an adapted version of Dowling's distributive strategies is used to show how two children, Klara and Teo, are provided with differential enhancement in the mathematical learning opportunities that they are offered. The analysis shows that the use of everyday settings of mathematics problem, including expectations about the social relationship in those settings, can cause children to collude in the kind of enhancement that they experience. Expectations about the social relationships, within the problems being solved and between the participants, contributed to the two children using strategies which channeled them towards operating in different domains.

In this paper, a methodology is proposed for gaining insights into preservice teachers’ understandings about young children’s mathematics learning. Using data from a Swedish and Norwegian pilot study, it is possible to see how a set of questions about a stimulus photo of children playing with some glass jars provided insights into the preservice teachers’ mathematical and pedagogical understandings. Although the preservice teachers seemed to be able to recognise a range of mathematical activities and respond to children engaging in them, they often gave only implicit, general information. This raises questions about teacher educators’ expectations about whether preservice teachers, at the end of their courses, should be able to provide more explicit descriptions of what children are doing and suggestions for how to develop their mathematical understandings. Information of this kind can inform teacher educators about what could be improved in future mathematics education courses in early years programmes.

In this chapter, we introduce the conference from which the chapters in this book originated. Then we discuss some of the background issues in order to describe the need for discussing issues to do with construction and instruction in early childhood mathematics. In particular, we discuss the evidence to do with whether children can learn mathematics through play and the role of the teacher in this discussion. Finally, we discuss the chapters in relation to the "dance of construction with instruction".

This book presents chapters based on papers presented at the second POEM conference on early mathematics learning. These chapters broaden the discussion about mathematics education in early childhood, by exploring the debate about construction versus instruction. Specific sections investigate the teaching and learning of mathematical processes and mathematical content, early childhood teacher development, transitions for young children between home and preschool, between home and school and between preschool and school. The chapters use a range of innovative theoretical and methodological approaches which will form an interesting basis for future research in this area.