Math talk when sharing different types of picture books on patterning

Shared picture book reading (SPBR) is beneficial for preschoolers’ mathematical development. Current insights into the contribution of picture book features to the quantity and complexity of the teacher–child interaction during SPBR in the domain of mathematics are limited but needed for deepened understanding of the effectiveness of this instructional activity. We therefore investigated teachers’ and preschoolers’ extra-textual talk when sharing two different types of picture books on repeating patterns, i.e., an implicit pattern picture book with repeating patterns in the pictures but not in the text, versus an explicit pattern picture book, with repeating patterns in the pictures as well as in the text. Thirty-eight teachers shared both types of picture books with their 506 4–5-year-old preschoolers. We compared the quantity and the mathematical complexity of teachers’ and preschoolers’ extra-textual talk about patterns between the two types of picture books. We found that explicit pattern picture books elicited more extra-textual talk about patterns than implicit pattern picture books. Teachers and preschoolers focused mostly on low complex pattern tasks in both types of picture books. The distribution of low complex versus high complex pattern talk did not significantly differ between the two types of picture books. Altogether, these findings point to the contribution of picture book features to the quantity, but not the mathematical complexity, of teacher–child mathematical interaction during SPBR.