Educators’ perspectives of play and math in kindergarten

Early math learning is a fundamental goal of early years education, which is commonly supported through play. In practice, however, educators’ differing views of play lead to different implementations of play that either dichotomize or integrate the constructs of play and academic learning. Despite this, little work has addressed the connections between teachers’ perspectives of play and mathematics and their approaches to math instruction in kindergarten. The present study responded to this need through qualitative analysis of educators’ perspectives of play and math learning. Results identified how the majority of participating educators supported more indirect, or child-led without adult intervention, approaches to math learning, while only a minority of educators described more direct, or teacher-facilitated, approaches to math. These findings point to a larger conversation about the need to move away from more child-led approaches and towards more teacher-facilitated approaches to play and early math learning in kindergarten.