This research is important because poor and minority children have often not been included in studies of young children’s mathematical learning, Parks said.
Parks studies link between formal, informal mathematics learning
Elementary education professor Amy Noelle Parks is completing the first year of a five-year ethnography study of a group of Taliaferro County schoolchildren, funded by a $521,972 National Science Foundation grant
Genevieve di Leonardo | April 12th, 2010 | Published in Features
Amy Noelle Parks
Can the way children learn mathematics informally at home and in their communities help elementary school teachers be more effective in teaching them in the classroom?
University of Georgia education professor Amy Noelle Parks thinks so and is working on an ethnographic study of a group of children in Taliaferro County Public Schools as they move from preschool to first grade to find out how.
Parks, an assistant professor in the College of Education’s department of elementary and social studies education, is now completing the pilot year of the five-year project, funded by a $521,972 grant from National Science Foundation.
Taliaferro County Public Schools was chosen because it provides the opportunity to learn more about mathematical learning in rural contexts, which are seldom studied in mathematics education research, said Parks. The majority of student-participants will be African-American children from low-income families.
“This research is important because poor and minority children have often not been included in studies of young children’s mathematical learning,” said Parks. “As a result, our understandings often do not reflect their ways of knowing. If we develop a better understanding of this, it is likely that teachers can draw on this knowledge to do a better job of teaching math in the primary grades.”
In addition to examining the ways in which the children’s thinking and participation in mathematics change as they move into increasingly formal classroom settings, the study explores their thinking in two other contexts: in formal interviews with researchers and in home and community settings with their parents.
Informal mathematics practices in home and community settings include such activities as measuring and using fractions during cooking, counting money, playing games that require counting, estimating times and distances, solving puzzles and building with blocks.
The study will follow 20 students over three years. The extended period of observation will enable Parks to study the impact of a variety of contexts on the mathematical performances of the same children.
In addition, the research will provide the opportunity to learn about the ways particular research methods – such as formal interviews and ethnographic observation – impact what mathematics researchers are able to learn in various contexts.
Genevieve di Leonardo is a master’s student in advertising and a publications assistant with the College of Education’s Office of Communications.