Exploring kindergarten teachers' pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics

The purpose of this study was to assess 81 kindergarten teachers' pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics on six subcategory areas such as number sense, pattern, ordering, shapes, spatial sense, and comparison. The data showed participants possessed a higher level of pedagogical content knowledge of "number sense" (M = 89.12) compared to other mathematics pedagogical content areas. The second highest scores among six subcategories of pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics was for the pedagogical content area of "pattern" (M = 82.33). The lowest scores among those six subcategories of kindergarten teachers' pedagogical content knowledge were obtained from the subcategory of "spatial sense" (M = 44.23), which involved the means to introduce children to spatial relationships. The second lowest score was obtained for the subcategory of "comparison" (M = 50.40) which involved the means to introduce the concept of graphing and the use of a balance scale for measurement. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010.