Savoirs in Early Childhood Education? Yes but, which ones?

Abstract

Nobody doubts that early childhood education is an essential step in the education of children, and that is a real place of learning, particularly in mathematics. However, it is not so sure that the savoirs to be taught, and knowledge to be transmitted in the early childhood settings, have been sufficiently described by different theoretical approaches to satisfy the needs of their teachers. The case of enumeration, studied by Brousseau (1984) and later by Briand (1993), is emblematic of the effort required to understand the knowledge involved in situations that students face. We will see that enumeration allows analyzing the difficulties of students in many cases, and not only in "mathematics". In light of these analyzes, teachers’ actions in these situations show how difficult it is to enter the necessary process of institutionalization of knowledge, by the lack of savoirs available in the school institution.