The importance of structure, clarity, representation, and language in elementary mathematics instruction

Instructional Perseverance in Early-Childhood Classrooms: Supporting Children’s Development of STEM Reasoning in a Social Justice Context

“…Huinker and Bill [19] later position the concept of facilitating mathematical discourse as a central and influential pedagogy to support the learning of mathematics in young children. Henderson Pinter et al [20] extend on this work, noting that teachers who plan and prepare to address misconceptions of young children through discourse are deemed effective in their practice. This also builds on the work of Imm and Stylianou [18], who found that classrooms where students felt safe to share mistakes, misconceptions, and general thinking about mathematics had higher levels of discourse due to the explicit message of learning from the discourse present.…”

“…The teacher must consider and prepare the means of discourse by analyzing the context of their classroom and the knowledge of their students to inform moves around attending to the strategies of children, interpreting children's' understandings, and determining how to respond to children's' understandings [22]. These instructional moves are informed by day-to-day teacher-child interactions, and influenced by both the content and pedagogical knowledge of the teacher [17,20]. Furthermore, Van Es and Sherin [23] propose that teachers make concerted, in-the-moment efforts to access children's thinking that may have been otherwise missed.…”