Exploring strength-based approaches using mathematical play pedagogy in Lesotho Early Childhood Care and Education settings

Learning mathematics is now required at all educational levels, including for those providing Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE). In addition, studies have shown that play-based mathematics education enhances children's capacity for logical thought, problem-solving, and procedural understanding of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division concepts. I believe that to assist children in attaining their maximum potential in mathematics learning, teachers must be aware of where children begin with mathematics and provide activities that help them develop their mathematical play. As a result, to sustain what works best for children and validate how it works so that it may be maintained and enhanced to meet the child's skills to promote play pedagogy, teachers in ECCE settings are advised to employ strength-based approaches. However, I observed that there needs to be more clarity, understanding, and analysis surrounding the purpose of the strengths approach and how it may be implemented in early childhood settings. Against this background, this study explored strength-based approaches using mathematical play pedagogy in Lesotho's ECCE settings. The study focused on working with teachers to improve their teaching practices and enrich all the participants, who were seen as co-learners and co-researchers. This study followed a qualitative approach underpinned by an interpretive paradigm and adopted an interpretive phenomenology research design. Direct lesson observations and face-to-face semi-structured interviews were used as data generation tools to obtain data from eight female teachers in the ECCE settings of the Berea district in Lesotho. Purposive and convenience sampling techniques were adopted to choose the research sites and the participants, while thematic content analysis was utilised for data analysis. The study incorporated my background, positionality, and other prominent methodological aspects like data transcription, validity, trustworthiness, and ethical considerations. Social constructivism and its principles were used in this study as a theoretical lens to explore strength-based approaches using mathematical play pedagogy to discover how children acquire, retain, and process information during teaching and learning in ECCE settings. The study's findings revealed that almost four out of five strength-based approaches existed in the ECCE settings, although teachers’ understanding of the strength-based approaches was unsatisfactory. Teachers used strength-based approaches when mediating their lessons but were unaware they were. The findings further highlighted that ready-made and homemade play materials were available and used to facilitate the playful learning of mathematics in the ECCE settings. The study also discovered that teachers need encouragement to use strength-based approaches, proper training specific to strength-based approaches, sponsored quarterly reflection meetings, and more parental engagement is essential. Based on these findings, the study thus recommends that teachers be involved in continuing professional development to support them with correctly interpreting and enacting the curriculum and other policies. Moreover, teachers need to form professional learning communities to share the best practices and transform their practices primarily to enhance quality education in ECCE settings. Another recommendation is that the teaching service department recruit teachers with higher qualifications to improve the ECCE workforce. Lastly, the study recommends that the government provide countrywide ECCE settings with teaching and learning materials.