Abstract

Background/purpose – Investigation into the misconceptions of preschool students in mathematics and their differences between the ages 4-5 and 5-6 years old helps form appropriate developmental mathematics teaching programs. However, although several studies have been carried out on preschoolers’ previous knowledge and misconceptions about mathematics, no corresponding research has been found in Greece. This study aims to investigate preschoolers’ misconceptions about numbers and operations and to reveal differences between preschoolers aged 4-5 and 5-6 years.

Materials/methods – Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using the content analysis method.

Results – The results showed that 5-6 years old preschoolers perform better than the 4-5 years old ones. Most misconceptions of the latter group appeared to be related to reverse counting, identifying arithmetic symbols and their matching quantities, adding and removing numbers without using auxiliary objects and multiplication. On the contrary, some preschoolers aged 5-6 needed help adding or subtracting two-digit numbers without using auxiliary objects. There were also a few cases where cardinality, division and multiplication were observed.

Conclusion – The distribution of students in kindergarten is mostly mixed aged groups, these findings will enable teachers to offer and personalize teaching support to these two aged groups.

Keywords: Maths, preschool education, numbers, operations, knowledge skills, misconceptions

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