Mathematics and Puppet Play as a Method in the Preschool Teacher Education

This study explores students’ perceptions and understanding of mathematics as a subject and using aesthetic expressions in their own mathematics teaching in preschool, more specifically, with puppet play as a method. In all teacher education in Sweden, mathematics in preschool is taught in different ways, which means that the teaching about the aesthetic possibilities as a part of the teaching of mathematics in preschool varies. The main purpose of the study has been to investigate students’ mathematical development in preschool practice based on the changes made in the educational and methodological implications during teacher education. The data collection consists of texts from 73 students. The qualitative content analysis focuses on the students’ descriptions of understanding and meaning of mathematics and aesthetics in their own teaching with the children. The results show that the methodological implications in the course’s organization and structure enabled a variation of qualitative changes in the students perceptions and beliefs about mathematics and aesthetics, but also that the conceptual languages of mathematics could be varied and concretized by new methodological strategies.