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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Kindergarten teachers’ orchestration of mathematical activities afforded by technology: agency and mediation

subject

description

This paper focuses on kindergarten teachers’ interactions with young children during mathematical learning activities involving the use of digital tools. We aim to characterise the teachers’ roles and actions in these activities and extend considerations of teachers’ orchestrations current in the research literature with regard to agency and mediation. Our analysis of teacher-children-digital tool interaction reveals that the kindergarten teachers took three roles in their work with young children, which we call Assistant, Mediator and Teacher roles. These roles were used interchangeably and purposefully by the kindergarten teachers. With regard to agency and mediation, we argue that agency is distributed over the human and non-human agents in the activity and that agency and mediation are interrelated.