Didactical situations in building chidlren’s ideas about matematical concepts in preschool education

If we want to understand how children in preschool period build their ideas of mathematical concepts, we must explore the educational environment, i.e. situations that are organized in kindergarten, and the role of children and the educator in them. This paper focuses on identification of the phenomena that accompany the process of “evolution” of mathematical concepts in a preschool child’s cognition in the environment of institutional preschool education. The basic methodological approach to the research was the grounded theory. Using axial coding the various subcategories were identified within the frame of the so called paradigmatic model according to Strauss and Corbin (1999). On their basis a model of a didactical situation in the environment of a kindergarten was developed. The theoretical framework was Brousseau’s Theory of Didactical Situations.