Situational observation and perception of pre-service early childhood educators in the field of mathematics—Development and validation of a test instrument

Abstract

Early mathematical education takes place in spontaneous everyday situations. In order for these everyday situations to become natural learning situations for children, (pre-service) early childhood educators must first recognize the mathematical potential in these situations. This ability of situational observation and perception has so far been insufficiently researched, partly due to limited methods for standardized measurement of this construct. In order to meet this need, we developed the video-based test instrument Vimas_num which measures pre-service early childhood educators’ situational perception with a focus on the area of quantities and numbers. The validity of different aspects of the test value interpretation is examined in three consecutive studies. The results provide validity evidence in relation to the test content, the internal structure of the test and the relationships with related constructs.