Math in daily plans: is it possible to conduct in the outdoors by preschool teachers?

Abstract

ABSTRACT Daily plans are the key tool for teachers to ensure their delivery meets the expectations of the programme, and math activities are one of the important activities required to be offered daily in the early years to form the foundations of future math knowledge. As outdoor environments provide various learning opportunities, assessing the math activities offered in daily plans is necessary, in part to review teachers’ practices. Therefore, analysing the preschool teachers’ daily plans was the aim of this research. Semi-structured interviews with preschool teachers and some shared daily plan examples were used to collect data. The findings show a discrepancy between teachers’ statements and the plans used. Although the participating teachers pointed to the use of the outdoors for math activities, the shared daily plans were limited in practice in their use of the out-of-classroom opportunities. The daily plans that teachers offered were mainly paper-based classroom activities instead of illustrating a broad use of various learning environments and opportunities. This finding indicates that preschool teachers might benefit from professional development courses that encourage them to address the early mathematics needs of children in their daily plans and through pedagogic practices that use a wide range of outdoor learning environments.