This article reports on a Swedish study investigating how children aged 2-3 years experience mathematical concepts through representations in play-responsive teaching. Drawing on the semiotic-cultural theory of learning, this study examines how representations, such as spoken language, bodily action, and artifacts, are mediated. Video-recorded teaching sessions are analyzed to identify semiotic means of objectification and semiotic nodes at which these representations converge. The analysis distinguishes between children encountering concepts expressed by others and expressing concepts themselves. The results indicate that play-responsive teaching creates varied opportunities for experiencing mathematical concepts, with distinct modes of sensuous cognition linked to whether a concept is encountered or expressed. This study underscores the role of teachers' choices in shaping these experiences and highlights bodily action as a significant form of representation. These findings aim to inform the use of representations in teaching mathematics to the youngest children in preschool.

A common challenge in teacher education is the perceived or created gap between theoretical education at the university and practical training at schools (Ebbelind & Helliwell, 2024). Additionally, there is a lack of digitally oriented didactics in teacher education (Papavlasopoulou et al., 2023). This is problematic as many children live in hybrid realities where analog and digital experiences are so intertwined that they cannot be separated. At the same time, some children lack these experiences. This study explores how school-age educare (SAEC) teacher students, who have engaged in both theoretical and practical elements at university and practice schools, reason about designing theoretically based learning activities that include digital tools. The specific research questions are:

In what ways do students perceive that the university course activities prepare them to design hybrid learning activities?

What emerges as central in students’ reasoning about designing SAEC teaching activities that include digital tools?

A central premise of this study is that pupils should develop digital competence early on to be able to become active members of a digitized society. To achieve this, teachers need to make scientifically based didactic choices to promote pupils’ learning (Wernholm, 2024). This study focuses on preparing SAEC teacher students to make such choices regarding the use of digital tools in their teaching practice. Internationally, Swedish SAEC is unique due to its close collaboration with compulsory schools and its combination of teaching, recreation, and meaningful leisure time. However, previous research identifies tensions between what SAEC teachers consider good practice and children’s perspectives on meaningful leisure time (Elvstrand et al., 2023).

This study is theoretically grounded in Design for Learning (Selander, 2008), which views teaching and learning as a form of multimodal design. The study’s design and the SAEC teacher students’ design of hybrid learning utilized tools developed within Design for Learning as part of a university course. SAEC teacher students participated in a teaching sequence with theoretical and practical elements at the university and two days at a practice school.

Data consists of 17 teacher students’ written reflections and two interviews; one individual and one group interview. Thematic analysis was performed to identify themes relevant to the study’s purpose and research questions. Preliminary results indicate that several students make explicit connections between theory and practice and express how the course elements help them acquire a theoretical model useful for designing hybrid learning activities in SAEC. Furthermore, the SAEC students express a will to work with hybrid learning activities in their future profession. They explain why and how hybrid learning activities are suitable for SAEC teaching, as they combine planned learning activities with pupils’ interests, making them meaningful. These results highlight the importance of preparing students, both theoretically and practically, for designing hybrid learning activities in SAEC. 

The aim of this study is to deepen the understanding of how preschool teachers can use representations of diferent kinds to bring fore the mathematical content that may be aforded in pictures and narrative designed for numerical learning purposes. Seventy-three video documentations of reading sessions with 27 toddlers (1–3 years of age) over the course of three semesters were analyzed with a focus on number-oriented actions that, theoretically, would facilitate toddlers’ learning of numbers. In the reading sessions the teachers extended the content of the pictures and the narrative in diferent ways, and how one and the same picture was handled was shown to impact on what was made possible for the children to discern. Three diferent objects of learning—identifying numbers, comparing numbers, and operating on numbers—were made visible. Further, the use of gestures strengthened the possibility for the children to make connections within and between representations. This contributes to our understanding of the importance of using representations and gestures with a pedagogical purpose.

Today’s children have never lived in an analogous world but in a hybrid reality where the physical and the digital are so intertwined that they cannot be separated (Wernholm, 2020). Thus, hybrid learning activities should arguably be central in education today (Wernholm et al, 2025). In this presentation, we focus on such activities. The presented study is part of a larger project aiming to explore what happens and becomes possible in theoretically framed hybrid activities that include young pupils’ creation of digital animations in Chemistry, Mathematics, and Swedish. Theoretically, we draw on the frameworks of social semiotics (Kress et al., 2001) and Designs for Learning (Selander, 2008), where teaching and learning are seen as multimodal designs. This is also the basis of the didactic design of the activities which were planned in collaboration between the teachers and the research team. Data has been generated through video recordings when pupils, in pairs or small groups, participate in activities where both analog and digital resources are used. The analysis is based on the Learning Design Sequence model (LDS) along with multimodal interaction analysis (Kress 2013). Preliminary results indicate that when pupils participate in hybrid learning activities, they position themselves in relation to each other and the digital and analog learning resources in different ways. Furthermore, they draw on their previous experiences and competencies to make meaning. Thus, this project contributes by providing implications for the early years of schooling by showing how hybrid activities can put a variety of children’s competencies into play and support their meaning-making in different subjects.

I artikeln undersöks hur elever positionerar sig och vilka kompetenser de använder i skapandet av digitala animationer i hybrida läraktiviteter. Syftet är att bidra med kunskap om centrala utgångspunkter för design av undervisning som innefattar hybrida läraktiviteter. Data består av videoobservationer av elever som tillsammans skapar digitala animationer i svenska, matematik och kemi. Studien tar utgångspunkt i det teoretiska perspektivet Design för Lärande, där undervisning och lärande betraktas som en form av multimodal design. Multimodal interaktionsanalys används för att analysera elevernas handlingar. Resultatet visar att eleverna använder tre kompetenser i de hybrida läraktiviteterna; digital kompetens, social kompetens och ämneskompetens. Utifrån hur kunniga och delaktiga eleverna är framträder fem olika positioneringar: kapten, guide, utforskare, missnöjd passagerare och passagerare. I artikeln diskuteras hur de olika positioneringarna och kompetenserna förhåller sig till och varandra och samverkar i hybrida läraktiviteter, samt vad lärare kan fokusera på i sin design av undervisning med digitala verktyg. 

In this article, the focus is on how students position themselves and what competencies they use when creating digital animations. The aim is to contribute with knowledge about important aspects for designing teaching that includes hybrid learning activities. The data consists of video observations of pupils' collaborative creation of digital animations in Swedish, Mathematics, and Chemistry. Multimodal interaction analysis was applied to analyze the pupils' actions. The study is theoretically framed by Design for Learning, where both teaching and learning are viewed as a form of multimodal design. The results showed five different positionings: captain, guide, explorer, dissatisfied passenger, and passenger. Three different competencies that pupils used in the hybrid learning activities were identified: digital, social, and subject competence. How the different positions and competencies relate to and interact with each other in hybrid learning activities were discussed, as well as what teachers can focus on in their design for learning. 

There is a growing consensus in research that children’s numerical competence starts to develop at a very early age. However, there are few tools for screening the development of early numerical competence and thereby making this development researchable. One obstacle in designing such tools is that verbal utterances cannot be used as the primary source for exploring the numerical competence of young children. The focus of this article is metho-dological, namely how toddlers’ (1–3-year-olds’) ways of experien-cing numbers can be made visible in research without relying solely on verbal utterances. A theoretically driven interview tool was developed based on five principles of: context, numbers, process, multiple-method activity approach, and differentiation. The two principles of numbers and process vouched for internal validity, while the three principles of context, multiple-method activity approach and differentiation vouched for external and ecological validity. Examples of empirically tested interview tasks are also presented and discussed.

Kända utmaningar i högskolepedagogik är dels en av lärarstudenter upplevd diskrepans mellan den teoretiska utbildning de möter på universitetet och den praktiska utbildning de möter vid övningsskolor, dels avsaknaden av metodik i allmänhet och metodik med digitala verktyg i synnerhet. Detta projekt syftar till att tydliggöra kopplingen mellan teori och praktik i en undervisningsdesign som inbegriper digitala verktyg, baserat på en tidigare prövad vetenskaplig modell för utveckling av undervisning: Lärdesignsekvensmodellen (LDS). Modellen har utvecklats inom det teoretiska perspektivet Design för Lärande (DfL) vilket utgår från ett multimodalt perspektiv på interaktion och lärande. Inledningsvis deltog universitetslärare och verksamma lärare i en föreläsning om DfL och LDS-modellen samt en workshop där de i smågrupper fick skapa en digital animation. Samma innehåll erbjöds senare till studenter i tre olika lärarutbildningsprogram och i fyra ämnesområden. I nästa steg använde studenterna LDS-modellen för att planera, genomföra och utvärdera en lärdesignsekvens med elever på övningsskolor, där eleverna bland annat fick skapa digitala animationer. Studenterna skrev individuella reflektioner och delade sina erfarenheter med studiekamrater och forskare. Intervjuer genomfördes med studenter, universitetslärare och verksamma lärare. Flera studenter kopplade tydligt sina praktiska erfarenheter till de teoretiska kunskaperna, vilket också noterades av verksamma lärare och universitetslärare. Trots att studenterna upplevde vissa utmaningar med att inkludera digitala verktyg i undervisningsdesignen, såsom tillgång till verktygen, tekniska problem och konflikter bland yngre elever, uttryckte flera studenter att de vill arbeta med digitala verktyg eftersom de observerat att flertalet elever var motiverade och samarbetade väl när de fick representera sin kunskap genom digitala animationer.

In mathematics education, collaboration between students is often emphasised as something desirable. The focus of this paper is on positioning in mathematics during collaborative problem solving and problem posing while exploring combinatorics. The study utilises the Learning Design Sequence model for lesson design and positioning theory as an analytical framework. In a sequence of lessons, students worked with both problem solving and problem posing, using different ways of representing their solutions, such as pictures, physical objects, and digital animations. One case of two 6-year-old students is used to illustrate their positioning during this sequence of lessons. One conclusion is that, when collaborating, students’ views of each other as learners in general and mathematics learners in particular may hinder the process of meaning making in mathematics. 

Given the need to increase equity in mathematics education, this study draws on earlier research connecting the mathematical and relational know-ing of teachers to determine how such combined knowing enables elemen-tary school students’ inclusion in mathematics. Through a participatory perspective on learning based on social practice theory, empirical examples in the results illustrate how the mathematical and relational knowing of teachers enables diverse participation in communities of classroom mathe-matics. For students’ spatial, social, and mathematical inclusion in the class-room, the enactment of both mathematical and relational knowing of teachers is important. Further, the results indicate that this enactment of both mathematical and relational knowing can be made by one or two co- teachers. Thus, when advocating for inclusive and quality mathematics education for all students, the mathematical as well as the relational knowing of teachers ought to be considered.

VI LÄRARE DEBATT: Regeringens uppdrag till Skolverket – att göra utbildningen i förskolan skärmfri – riskerar att ge negativa och allvarliga konsekvenser, särskilt för barn som är i störst behov av att möta en digitaliserad värld med stöd av utbildade förskollärare och barnskötare. Det skriver 27 barn- och förskoleforskare i ett gemensamt upprop.