Enacting app-based learning activities with viewing and representing skills in preschool mathematics lessons

Abstract

This chapter comprises discussion on research findings of this study on how apps can be used in the classroom to promote children’s construction of mathematical knowledge by setting up specific learning contexts in ways that fundamentally transform the instructional environment. The study results identify how children enact viewing and representing skills through digital texts to acquire new strategies in their addition and subtraction learning. These skills enable children to externalise their understanding and internalise new meaning-making when interacting with peers. However, these dual reciprocal learning approaches require due consideration of the elements of the learners’ learning styles, the standard of the game designs and the community settings of the classroom, all of which are crucial in determining the learners’ engagement in a learning activity and active involvement in associated learning processes. With the appropriate level of autonomy and opportunity for choice, learner engagement will contribute to subsequent learning, with behavioural intensity and emotional quality at optimal levels. A detailed examination of the meaning-making processes through which viewing and representing skills mediate children’s knowledge acquisition while seamlessly switching between individual and social interactions has led to the development of the framework in the preschool classroom’s learner-centred mathematics learning model presented here.