The challenges and barriers were described as:

In Higher Ed…

Lack of educators/access to higher education by providers

Lack of alignment between two and four-year institutions

Lack of understanding about how early math methods should be taught

Lack of qualifications among faculty who teach early math methods

In Professional Development….

Lace of access to professional development

Lack of buy-in to the need for professional development in early math

Lack of understanding of developmental progressions in early math

Once the challenges and barriers were identified, the Illinois Early Math Advisory Committee developed three major recommendation areas for improvement with several specific and immediate ideas outlined.

1.  Organization Strategies

2.  Higher Education Strategies

3.  Professional Development Strategies

Over the next three weeks, I am going to “unpack” these strategic areas and provide a forum to discuss the more specific ideas for implementation.

1.  There is little time devoted to math learning.  If you look at the overall breakdown of your day, how much time is spent expressly in math-focused activity?

2.  There are few experiences for children where math is the primary goal.  Take each activity/lesson you are planning for next week.  How many of them have math as their primary goal?

3.  Math still tends to be incidental, rather than intentional.  Do you ever look back at an interaction or activity and realize afterward that mathematical thinking was happening, but it wasn’t planned; it just happened?

4.  Lessons tend to elicit what children already know.  I often see this in the early childhood classroom.  The math that is taking place is repetitive and the children already know it. How are you scaffolding children’s prior knowledge so that the math learning goes deeper?

5.  The math that is currently happening does not build key foundational skills and processes.  Can you name a mathematical foundational skills?  What is a math process?

6.  “Doing calendar is NOT doing Math.” (Bredekamp) When asked how you support math in your program, do you describe the daily calendar as the center of your math activity?  If so, you need to rethink what you are doing and how you are doing it.

So… are these limiting factors also limiting you?