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Research Article

Examination of Mother-Child Math Talks’ Content and Process during Shared Book Reading

Belma Turker-Biber , Aysegul Akinci-Cosgun , Feyza Aydin-Bolukbas

The study aims to analyze, in terms of content and process, the math talks between the mother and child during the shared book reading of the illustra.

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The study aims to analyze, in terms of content and process, the math talks between the mother and child during the shared book reading of the illustrated storybooks with math contents. The study group under the research is comprised of nine pairs of mother and child. The process of the study 18 videos which were recorded when two storybooks with math contents were read by the mothers. In the data collection process, each pair of mother and child together read two storybooks given to them in their home environment, and the entire process was video-recorded. Subsequently, interviews were held with mothers for identifying their views about supporting their children’s math skills. It was shown that the content of mother-child math talks in the home environment was mostly about the learning area of numbers and counting skills. It was a remarkable result that math concepts such as sorting/ranking and properties/features of objects were not in the contents of mother-child math talks. The results from interviews with mothers, it was inferred that the mothers viewed themselves as inadequate for talking to their children about math concepts, and performed the math talks mostly on the basic skills such as counting the numbers.

Keywords: Math talk, math-themed storybooks, mother-child shared book reading.

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