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RESEARCH PRODUCT

The Materialisation of Children’s Mathematical Thinking Through Organisation of Turn-Taking in Small Group Interactions in Kindergarten

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This chapter reports from a case study which focuses on the coordination of turn-taking within two small groups of kindergarten children (age 5–6) working on addition problems. The two segments of small group interaction were analysed from a multimodal, interpretative perspective. Drawing on Radford’s (J Res Math Educ, 2:7–44, 2013) theory of knowledge objectification, the study explores the characteristics of children’s turn-taking and what role children’s organisation of turn-taking plays in the movement of the joint activity, and thus for the materialisation of their mathematical thinking. The findings suggest that children’s various ways of organising turn-taking give rise to different ways in which their mathematical thinking is materialised and illustrates in particular how multiplicative structures emerge from their turn-taking. The chapter also illustrates how children’s turn-taking, and thus their mathematical thinking, seem dependent on contextual features like the formulation of the problem, available artefacts and children’s positional location in space. Implications that can be drawn from this study is that children’s early multiplicative thinking can be promoted by organising them in small groups and asking them to solve various equal groups addition problems with their hands and fingers.