UC Santa Cruz

State and federal departments of education, the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSS-M), the National Association of Educators of Young Children (NAEYC), and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) agree that high-quality mathematics instruction (a) challenges learners; (b) focuses on conceptual understanding; (c) makes connections to children’s lived experiences; and (d) provides opportunities for multimodal, collaborative, and dialogic learning. Despite widespread understanding that mathematics is a crucial, foundational component of the curriculum in early childhood (EC) (Claessens et al., 2009; Duncan et al., 2007), research has shown that mathematics teachers in United States kindergarten classrooms overwhelmingly focus on covering basic content and skills (Engel et al., 2016), rarely employing the type of beyond-the-basics instructional practices advocated above. Instead of focusing on the apparent deficits of kindergarten mathematics instruction, this study explores what characteristics predict teachers’ allocation of instructional time to beyond-the-basics mathematics practices. One avenue of investigation into these high-quality teaching practices is to examine teachers who have experience in working with diverse student populations (i.e. bilingual EC teachers and EC teachers who have completed formal training in best practices for working with multilingual learners[ML]), who seem to exhibit more progressive, effective, and linguistically-responsive instructional practices than their counterparts (Hopkins, 2013; López et al., 2013).

Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ECLS-K: 2011), this quantitative study investigates whether kindergarten teachers’ educational preparation and classroom language contexts are correlated with the frequency at which they report using beyond-the-basics mathematics instruction (i.e. instruction that is cognitively demanding, conceptually-focused, uses real-life examples, and is collaborative and dialogic), and whether these relationships vary across sociodemographic contexts. Results of multiple regression analysis and supplementary t-tests revealed that teaching in a bilingual classroom, completion of at least one ML methods course, and completion of at least one EC methods course were positively associated with time spent on beyond-the-basics mathematics instruction, along with total time spent teaching mathematics overall. Schools’ sociodemographic characteristics (proportion of students eligible for free/reduced lunch and proportion of students designated English learners) were not found to be significant influences on these particular components of mathematics instruction. This study provides educational administrators, university teacher education programs, and agencies of teacher credentialing with valuable information on the types of experiences and environments that result in teachers employing the types of high quality, beyond-the-basics mathematics instruction that have been shown to increase student learning.