Slow Maths: A Metaphor of Connectedness for Early Childhood Mathematics

Abstract

This concluding chapter draws on the work of previous chapters to draw out three dimensions of connection. The first dimension is the connection between mathematical ideas that is characteristic of deep understanding and the distinctive epistemological basis of the discipline of mathematics. The second is the connection between mathematics and culture, in which the joy and delight of playing with and discovering mathematical ideas permeate learning. The third is the deep connection between mathematics and the world, in which mathematics both arises from a consideration of real-world problems and models those problems. Such connections take time and are often undervalued in an era of accountability and easily measured standards. The chapter challenges three dominant metaphors of education-those of education as factory, clinic, or race-and proposes a metaphor of slow maths, borrowing from the slow food movement in which connections to people, to culture, to history, to knowledge, to learning, to the world, and to self, are paramount.