EMELI – Early Mathematics Education studies of Longitudinal Interventions

The focus of EMELI is on toddlers’ mathematical knowledge and how to enhance early mathematics education with long term effects. The aim is to bring together expertise from two complementary research projects in Sweden and Norway.

With basis in these projects, the aim is to design joint research with significant impact on early childhood education in both countries.

The objectives are 1) to develop methodologies for identifying and interpreting toddlers’ mathematical know­ledge and skills, and 2) to scale up a specially designed teaching program proven to be successful.

One challenge in EMELI is to preserve the child-responsive design embedded in the teaching program and another is the design of an assessment instrument that qualifies for both quantitative and qualitative measures in a longitudinal perspective.

There are theoretical, technical, methodological and ethical concerns to take into consideration which are to be solved through infrastructure and resources at the network partners (affiliated to University of Gothenburg, Linnaeus University and Stavanger University).

Further, a necessary combination of expertise in child-responsive research designs as well as the expertise of large-scale studies and methods for practice-based micro-analyses are provided by the participating research groups.

Activities to solve the challenges and designing the up-scaling will be done during 2021-2022 parallel to applying for funding to conduct the large-scale study.