”Det är så integrerat i mitt tänkande” : fem arbetslags resonemang om matematikens roll i förskolan

Sammanfattning: The background to the study was that the school agency published a report stating that students, after completing school, did not meet the criteria to receive the grade “Pass” in mathematics. The study presents the reasoning of work teams from five different preschool departments’, about ways to work with the subject with children in the ages four to five. The study may help future teachers to develop new attitudes regarding mathematics in the preschool, by letting them take part of others pedagogues’ thoughts and experiences. We chose to first observe five preschools and then interview the five preschool departments’ work team. Some work teams believe that mathematics should not be dealt with as a theme in pre-school, but should rather belong to compulsory school, they consider mathematics as a subject that is always present anyway, as it creeps into other activities. Science, play, music and languages are examples of various subjects that mathematics is integrated in. The result shows that although the priority of mathematics in the preschool varies, the main focus is always language. What is considered as mathematics in the preschool is described as different types of problem solution; Room perception, Number sense, Categorization or Statistics are included. In the discussion, the work teams mainly focus on the use of everyday mathematics.