In Hanna Palmér’s office, there are drawings by her children on the walls, decorated with numbers. Hardly surprising, since Hanna is committed to giving all children the best possible mathematics education.
“This is something all children have a right to, regardless of what their parents do for a living or which school they attend. My research can help improve the teaching children receive.”
Creating the right conditions for learning
Hanna is a professor of mathematics education and also deputy vice-chancellor for teacher education at Linnaeus University. Her research focuses on how children in preschool and preschool class learn mathematics through problem-solving, as well as on how young children’s number sense develops and how it can be supported.
“We’ve worked with one- to three-year-olds in a project called Dutta. How do they go about discovering numbers and quantities? There are many studies showing how far a three-year-old can count, but how did they get from not being able to count to being able to? And what can we do as early as at those ages to give all children the best possible conditions?”
Hanna Palmér
Professor of mathematics education, deputy vice-chancellor for teacher education
Hanna Palmér conducts research on children aged 0–12 and their learning of mathematics, as well as on teachers’ professional development with a focus on mathematics teaching. She is a member of the Swedish National Agency for Education’s Scientific Council.
FUNDING AWARDED SINCE 2020
SEK 12.3 million
Funders: the Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Institute for Educational Research
In Dutta, Hanna and her colleagues observed which activities the children enjoyed in preschool. They then added elements to these activities that gave the children opportunities to discover numbers and quantities through their play.
“Then we were able to compare the knowledge of children who took part in the project with that of children who didn’t. We found that the activities produced very strong results, both qualitatively and quantitatively.”
Hanna’s latest study is called Sumi and focuses on implementing the knowledge gained from Dutta.
“How do we package the Dutta teaching so other preschools can use it properly, giving their children access to these benefits too? Research has shown that it’s extremely difficult to implement teaching without working closely with the children and the teachers, but we researchers would be a thousand years old before we’d even managed to implement the method across the Småland region.”
Change the materials – not the teachers
That is why Hanna and her colleagues in Sumi are working with a form of professional development material. They evaluate, revise and adapt the material to fit everyday practice better, and then evaluate it again. “When something doesn’t work, it’s not the teachers who need to change, but the material”, she says.
“Most recently, it involved all the preschools in an entire municipality. The results show that if our material is used in the way we intend, the teaching becomes sufficiently Dutta-like, and children have better opportunities to learn maths.”
“Sweden’s best teacher education”
Over the past seven years, the Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) has reviewed teacher education programmes at universities across Sweden. Linnaeus University has fared very well.
“I got curious and ran the numbers to see how we compare with other universities, and that’s when I saw that we had the second-best results. But since I like figures, I couldn’t resist looking at the data from different angles and digging a bit deeper. We offer a very broad range of teacher education programmes, with degree-awarding powers in 20 subjects. We train vocational teachers, preschool teachers, primary school teachers for years F–3 and 4–6, after-school teachers, and subject teachers. So, if you look at our breadth in relation to quality, we come out as Sweden’s best teacher education”, says Hanna.
Unique, strong focus on professional practice
Especially when it comes to teachers for the younger age groups, students do not tend to move far to study, since teacher education is available in many locations. Linnaeus University therefore plays an important role in supplying teachers to the region.
“One thing that sets us apart is our strong focus on professional practice, which also applies to our theoretical courses. In the primary school teacher education programmes, for example, you spend two days every other week at your placement school for work-based training. We want to create a closer link between theory and practice, but also counteract the kind of reality shock that may arise when students enter working life.”
Another unique feature is the organisation of the teacher education around education, research and collaboration. There are research funds directly linked to the teacher education, as well as networks where the university’s teachers collaborate closely with teaching staff in schools and preschools.
The Swedish National Agency for Education’s Scientific Council
The Swedish National Agency for Education has a newly established scientific council consisting of ten members, whose role is to provide guidance on education within the school system and to support the agency in its remit from the government. Hanna is one of the members.
“It really feels like an honour. I was also enthusiastic when I saw the composition of the council. There’s a great breadth here, ranging all the way from economics to special needs education and practice-based research.”
I want all children to get the best possible teaching.
Both school education and university teaching should be based on scientific evidence and proven experience. The Swedish National Agency for Education’s Scientific Council is intended to support the agency in ensuring that decisions and guidelines meet this requirement in the best possible way.
“The idea is that we on the council should be involved early in the processes, to act in an advisory and guiding capacity in the Swedish National Agency for Education’s work to achieve a clearer grounding in research. Together, we can steer the work in the right direction!”
Let the children come to our universities
Hanna believes that children should visit universities, both to spark interest and to show that there’s nothing to be afraid of. And there can be many preconceptions.
“Once I was going to explain what a researcher does to a preschool class. The teacher had told them that a researcher from Linnaeus University was coming to visit. The children are sitting in a circle, and I can see one boy fidgeting a bit, sort of nudging his teacher. He clearly isn’t happy.”
“Finally, the teacher says ‘Yes, it’s her. She’s the researcher.’ ‘You don’t look like I thought you would’, the boy says to me, disappointed. He’d probably imagined someone turning up in a lab coat with test tubes and microscopes or other exciting things – but instead there was just an ordinary woman.”