Aizonia

Curr Res Educ (2015) 1(2), 58-69.

As individuals’ cognitive enhancement begins from birth, their mathematical knowledge that is necessary for their whole lives should be supported during early childhood. Considering the education given during the pre-school period, story books are one of the valuable educational materials for their growth in cognition. From this perspective, the purpose of this study is to investigate mathematical concepts and skills in story books that are appropriate for preschoolers. This study followed qualitative approaches. In this study, story books were investigated with respect to the mathematical concepts and skills found in national early childhood education curriculum. Randomly selected 30 story books were analyzed with documentary analysis method. Data were collected from the story books, each of which was reviewed by at least two researchers. The results indicated that story books generally concentrate on counting, spatial perception and time among mathematical concepts and skills. On the other hand, patterns, operations (addition and subtraction), and graph are most rarely seen concepts and skills in these books. Especially mathematical expressions related to problem solving skill highly emphasized in primary and secondary school curricula were not significantly observed in the story books investigated.

Link of the manuscript pdf