This work is part of a research process that analyses teachers’ practices in Early Childhood Education, specifically studying the classroom content linked to the initial literacy process and to the teaching of logical-mathematical knowledge; in other words, it analyses the classroom practices involving pupils aged 3, 4 and 5  in the teaching of these two subjects. This paper therefore explores the confluence of teachers’ practices when they teach both kinds of content.

There is nothing new about research into the relationship between content and practices. There is a certain tradition that has highlighted how certain features of content have a direct bearing on curricular activity. A study by Stodolsky and Grossman (1995) defines this link in terms of such features as the degree of sequencing, the degree of definition, and the subject matter covered by the different content. Hennessy, Ruthven & Brindley (2005), too, links teaching practices involving the use of ICTs to the educational traditions of different disciplinary bodies. Nevertheless, these studies focus on secondary education, where the content has a clearly defined cultural and epistemological nature that is substantially different to what happens in the stage that concerns us here, namely, early childhood education. We should consider how the degree of teacher specialisation in both stages is a distinctive aspect that is sufficiently important to substantially explain the different influences that content has on classroom practices.

Accordingly, and in the light of the results already reported by the research group Ramírez et al. (2016), the teachers in early childhood education focus a large part of the definition of their classroom tasks on plans and patterns of activity that enable them to manage the atmosphere in the classroom and their curricular resources and elements in order to meet their educational goals. Such strategies as the assembly, working in learning centers, the combination of task times and free play, among others, considerably help the teachers in this stage to structure and organise their classes. This approach to teaching in turn informs its planning. From this perspective, it might be more appropriate for our purpose here to address the study of the confluence of initial literacy and the teaching of logical-mathematical knowledge, focusing on it through classroom activities, while at the same time analysing the classroom subjects that are specific to each one of these two ambits, confining them to the stage of early childhood education.

The approach adopted here is therefore based on the observation and analysis of actual classroom practices, studying the tasks that teachers perform in the classroom in regard to initial literacy and logical-mathematical knowledge, and analysing and assessing the content of the tasks, as well as the nature of the patterns of activity in which they are undertaken.  It is understood that tasks are well-defined actions that are meaningful in their own right, and complete the sequence of the development of teaching, and of its practices in particular. In our case, the tasks become the thread that gives educational meaning to classroom work and, at the same time, enlighten us about the teaching approaches of both types of content. Furthermore, the positioning of the tasks within the activity patterns specific to the stage’s teaching culture tell us about their nature and the importance teachers give them.

Based on these premises, the following research goals have been formulated:

-          Describe the tasks that teachers use for teaching the two types of content.

-          Analyse and assess the content of the practice’s tasks in relation to the subject’s theoretical understanding.

-          Compare the time and effort devoted to these two major subjects in the cases studied. 

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