Maltese teachers’ beliefs concerning the integration of children’s literature in mathematics teaching and learning

Abstract

This exploratory mixed-methods study set out to explore Maltese primary school teachers' perceived barriers to, and enablers for, the integration of children's literature in mathematics teaching. Data were collected by means of an online questionnaire and semi-structured interviews, and analysed thematically using Ajzen's Theory of Planned Behaviour. The responses given by the participants showed that integration of mathematics and stories was not a common practice. The perceived barriers were categorised as Resource Constraint, Time Constraint, Lack of Pedagogical Knowledge and Confidence, Doubts about Outcome Expectancy, and Inhibiting Social Norms while the three perceived enablers identified were Pedagogical Benefits, Love of Stories, and Enabling Social Norms. Given that the majority of the participating teachers acknowledged the potential benefits of the approach and expressed a wish for training, one key recommendation of the study is for teaching mathematics through stories to be explicitly included in pre-service and in-service professional development programmes.

Australian primary school teachers’ perceived barriers to and enablers for the integration of children’s literature in mathematics teaching and learning

“…Our Australian study's findings largely resonate with those of the Irish study (Prendergast et al, 2019) and the Maltese study (Farrugia & Trakulphadetkrai, 2020). Specifically, the contextual data of the teachers in this study revealed that the majority of them (75.1%) had either never used children's literature in their mathematics teaching or had done so but infrequently (i.e., 10 mathematics lessons or less per school year).…”

“…There is a limited body of research that connects teachers' beliefs to the use of children's literature in the teaching of mathematics (e.g., Cotti & Schiro, 2004;Farrugia & Trakulphadetkrai, 2020;Prendergast et al, 2019). In Cotti and Schiro's (2004) study, they created a Mathematics and Children's Literature Belief Inventory to facilitate teachers' understanding of their own ideological positions and those of other teachers.…”

“…Previous studies conducted by the current study's third author (Farrugia & Trakulphadetkrai, 2020;Prendergast et al, 2019) investigated perceived barriers to, and enablers for, the integration of children's literature in mathematics classrooms in Ireland and Malta. The studies adopted an inductive approach allowing teachers' beliefs concerning the use of children's literature in mathematics teaching and learning to emerge from open-ended survey data.…”

“…The survey contained four key sections: the first section asked the participants to define and give examples of children's literature; the second section asked the participants to write the first five thoughts that come to mind when they think about 'the integration of children's literature in mathematics teaching and learning'; the third section contained eight questions relating to their experience (if any) of integrating children's literature; and the fourth and final section asked contextual information about the participants (see Table 1). This survey was developed and piloted by Trakulphadetkrai (2015) with the English sample and subsequently developed further with the Irish sample (Prendergast et al, 2019) and the Maltese sample (Farrugia & Trakulphadetkrai, 2020).…”

“…This paper reports the findings from a qualitative study that investigated the beliefs of Australian, primary school in-service teachers (ISTs) and pre-service teachers (PSTs) concerning the integration of children's literature in their mathematics teaching. This study is part of an international study that examined the same beliefs as espoused by both ISTs and PSTs in different countries, e.g., Ireland (Prendergast et al, 2019) and Malta (Farrugia & Trakulphadetkrai, 2020). Investigation into Australian ISTs' and PSTs' beliefs in relation to the use of children's literature to teach mathematics is warranted as educational findings in different countries are not necessarily applicable to the Australian context, and ISTs' experiences and beliefs are not necessarily the same as those held by PSTs.…”