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Early Mathematics Learning and Development
Virginia Kinnear
Mun Yee Lai
Tracey Muir Editors
Forging
Connections in
Early Mathematics
Teaching and
Learning
Series editor
Lyn D. English
Queensland University of Technology, School of STM Education
Brisbane, QLD, Australia
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11651
Virginia Kinnear Mun Yee Lai
•
Tracey Muir
Editors

Mathematics Teaching
and Learning
123
Editors
Virginia Kinnear Tracey Muir
School of Education, College of Education, Faculty of Education, College of Arts, Law
Psychology and Social Work and Education
Flinders University University of Tasmania
Bedford Park, SA Launceston, TAS
Australia Australia
Mun Yee Lai

Faculty of Education and Arts,
School of Education
Australian Catholic University
Fitzroy, VIC
Australia
ISSN 2213-9273 ISSN 2213-9281 (electronic)

ISBN 978-981-10-7151-5 ISBN 978-981-10-7153-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7153-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017957695
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018

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Contents
1 Forging Connections in Early Mathematics: Perspectives

and Provocations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Virginia Kinnear, Mun Yee Lai and Tracey Muir
2 Early Mathematics Education: A Plea for Mathematically
Founded Conceptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Virginia Kinnear and Erich Ch. Wittmann
3 Powerful Frameworks for Conceptual Understanding . . . . . . . . . . 37
Camilla Björklund
4 Building Connections Between Children’s Representations
and Their Conceptual Development in Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Janette Bobis and Jennifer Way
5 Geometry Learning in the Early Years: Developing
Understanding of Shapes and Space with a Focus on
Visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Iliada Elia, Marja van den Heuvel-Panhuizen and Athanasios Gagatsis
6 A Possible Learning Trajectory for Young Children’s
Experiences of the Evolution of the Base-10 Positional
Numeral System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Mun Yee Lai and Chun Ip Fung
7 From Cradle to Classroom: Exploring Opportunities to Support
the Development of Shape and Space Concepts in Very Young
Children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Aisling Leavy, Jennifer Pope and Deirdre Breatnach
8 Mathematizing Basic Addition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Allen Leung and Simon Hung
v
vi Contents
9 Connecting the Mathematics Identity of Early Childhood

Educators to Classroom Experiences for Young Children . . . . . . . 155
Sandra M. Linder and Amber M. Simpson
10 Using Mathematics to Forge Connections Between Home and
School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Tracey Muir
11 Young Children’s Reasoning Through Data Exploration . . . . . . . . 191
Gabrielle Oslington, Joanne T. Mulligan and Penny Van Bergen
12 Making Connections to Realize Learning Potential in Early
Childhood Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Aubrey H. Wang and James P. Byrnes
13 Funds of Knowledge: Children’s Cultural Ways of Knowing
Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
Maulfry Worthington
14 Making Connections Using Multiplication and Division
Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Jennifer Young-Loveridge and Brenda Bicknell
15 Slow Maths: A Metaphor of Connectedness for Early Childhood
Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
Steve Thornton
Contents vii
Chapter Title and author Keywords

number
1 Forging Connections in Early Connections; Mathematical learning;
Mathematics: Perspectives and Purposeful; Mathematics ideas;
Provocations Children’s lives; Mathematics culture
Virginia Kinnear, Mun Yee Lai and
Tracey Muir
2 Early Mathematics Education: A Plea Mathematical structure; Conceptual
for Mathematically Founded understanding; Design; Mathematics
Conceptions activities; Play; Pure and applied
Virginia Kinnear and Erich Ch. mathematics; Early childhood
Wittmann
3 Powerful Frameworks for Conceptual Conceptual understanding; Half;
Understanding Attention; Preschool; Structure;
Camilla Björklund Learning intention; Variation theory of
learning; Preschool
4 Building Connections Between Representations; Gesture; Drawing;
Children’s Representations and Their Conceptual understanding; Early years
Conceptual Development in of school
Mathematics
Janette Bobis and Jennifer Way
5 Geometry Learning in the Early Geometry; Visualization; Shape
Years: Developing Understanding of transformation; Imaginary perspective
Shapes and Space with a Focus on taking; Spatial concepts; Gesture; Early
Visualization years
Iliada Elia, Marja van den
Heuvel-Panhuizen and Athanasios
Gagatsis
6 A Possible Learning Trajectory for Base-10 positional numeral system;
Young Children’s Experiences of the Concept of place value; Teaching for
Evolution of the Base-10 Positional mathematizing; Early years of school
Numeral System
Mun Yee Lai and Chun Ip Fung
7 From Cradle to Classroom: Geometry; Spatial awareness; Shape;
Exploring Opportunities to Support Learning trajectories; Play; Gesture;
the Development of Shape and Space Home; Community; Language; Birth to
Concepts in Very Young Children 8 years
Aisling Leavy, Jennifer Pope and
Deirdre Breatnach
8 Mathematizing Basic Addition Mathematizing; Addition; Counting;
Allen Leung and Simon Hung Subitizing; Guided reinvention; Early
years of school
9 Connecting the Mathematics Identity Identity; Professional development;
of Early Childhood Educators to Mathematics; Phenomenology;
Classroom Experiences for Young Prior-to-school
Children
Sandra M. Linder and Amber M.
Simpson
viii Contents
Chapter Title and author Keywords

number
10 Using Mathematics to Forge Mathematics; Home school partnership;
Connections Between Home and Numeracy; Parents; Early years of
School school
Tracey Muir
11 Young Children’s Reasoning Gifted education; Statistical reasoning;
Through Data Exploration Model building; Data modelling;
Gabrielle Oslington, Joanne T. Mulligan Representations; Classification; Early
and Penny Van Bergen years of school
12 Making Connections to Realize Opportunity-Propensity framework;
Learning Potential in Early Opportunity factors; Propensity factors;
Childhood Mathematics Structural equation modeling;
Aubrey H. Wang and James P. Byrnes Mathematics learning; Early childhood
13 Funds of Knowledge: Children’s Cultural knowledge; Children’s
Cultural Ways of Knowing interests; Pretend-play; Preschool;
Mathematics Informal mathematics
Maulfry Worthington
14 Making Connections Using Counting; Multiplication and division;
Multiplication and Division Contexts Representations; Materials; Place value;
Jennifer Young-Loveridge and Brenda Early years of school
Bicknell
15 Slow Maths: A Metaphor of Connections; Slow; Disciplinary norms;
Connectedness for Early Childhood History; Culture; Real world; Metaphor
Mathematics
Steve Thornton
Contents
Prior-to-school Preschool Early years of school Early Play Everyday Prior Funds of Home
Childhood experiences knowledge Knowledge
and knowledge and
mathematics
2, 10 3, 13 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14 2, 4, 5, 7, 12 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 13 2, 3, 7, 8, 11, 13, 2, 4, 8, 10, 10, 13 7, 9, 10, 12, 13
14 11, 12, 14
Mathematical Mathematical Mathematical concepts Mathematical Mathematical Environmental Curriculum Pedagogy Learning
or statistical language processes Structure and task design trajectories
Reasoning
3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 14 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 2, 3, 4, 6, 11, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 11 2, 7, 10, 12, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 13, 6, 7, 13
11, 14 13 14 14 13, 14
Number Counting Geometry Visualization Gesture Drawing Objects and Children’s Mathematizing
Materials Graphic
Representations
3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 6, 8, 14 5, 7 5, 7, 8 4, 5, 7, 8 4, 5, 11, 13 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 4, 6, 8, 12
14 8, 14 14
ix
About the Editors
Dr. Virginia Kinnear is a Lecturer in early childhood education at Flinders

University in South Australia. She worked as a solicitor for 10 years before coming
to early childhood education through studying and teaching Montessori education
(3–6 years) in the USA. She then qualified and taught in early childhood teaching
qualification in Australia and has 18-years experience in early childhood and ter-
tiary teaching. Virginia’s Ph.D. focused on statistical reasoning in early childhood
however her research and teaching interests are in all aspects of mathematics
learning. She is particularly interested in young children’s statistical learning and
thinking, the development of critical and ethical thinking, and the intellectual
attributes and processes that support mathematical engagement.
Dr. Mun Yee Lai is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at the Australian Catholic
University. She has extensive experience and lectures in both primary and sec-
ondary mathematics education. She conducts research into pre-service teachers’
mathematical knowledge for teaching, teaching for mathematising, using Variation
Theory in Learning Study and Chinese primary children’s misconception in deci-
mal numbers. Recently, she has begun to explore the application of Planned
Behaviour Theory for understanding school learners’ mathematics learning inten-
tion.
Dr. Tracey Muir is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education at the University
of Tasmania. Her research interests include effective teaching for numeracy,
problem solving in mathematics, the use of ICT in mathematics and parental
involvement in mathematics education. She has published over 40 journal articles
and conference papers and was a previous co-editor of Australian Primary
Mathematics Classroom. She is a past Vice President (Development) of
Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA). She has pre-
sented seminars and workshops at state, national and international conferences and
is particularly passionate about working with teachers to enhance their classroom
numeracy practices and engaging children in mathematics.
xi
Chapter 1
Mathematics: Perspectives
and Provocations
Virginia Kinnear, Mun Yee Lai and Tracey Muir
Abstract This edited book brings together an international collection of work on a

consistent and growing focus in mathematics education: the need to forge connec-
tions in early mathematics learning. Each chapter examines diverse ways that con-
nections can be made, philosophically, theoretically, and pedagogically, illustrating
different perspectives and providing provocations for researchers and educators. This
chapter introduces themes of connection found in mathematics education and inter-
disciplinary literature and considers the purpose and value of connection in mathe-
matics learning, specifically for children from birth to eight years. An overview of
each of the book chapters and their connections mathematics is also provided.

Keywords Connections Mathematical learning Purposeful Mathematics ideas

Children’s lives Mathematics culture
1.1 Introduction
Connection: A relationship in which a person or thing is linked or associated with some-
thing else; the action of linking one thing with another (Oxford Dictionary, 2017)
The significance of forging connections in young children’s mathematical

learning has gained increasing attention in the last few decades. Multidisciplinary
research continues to expand our evidence for, and understanding of, young
V. Kinnear (&)
Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
e-mail: virginia.kinnear@flinders.edu.au
M. Y. Lai
Australian Catholic University, Sydney, Australia
e-mail: MunYee.Lai@acu.edu.au
T. Muir
University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia
e-mail: tracey.muir@utas.edu.au
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 1

V. Kinnear et al. (eds.), Forging Connections in Early Mathematics Teaching
and Learning, Early Mathematics Learning and Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7153-9_1
2 V. Kinnear et al.
children’s capacities to learn mathematics, and to widen our perspectives about

providing children with rich, meaningful mathematics learning experiences. We
also know that successful mathematics learning experiences significantly impact
children’s current and future education and life opportunities (Clements &
Sarama, 2014; Moss, Bruce, & Bobis, 2016; Perry & Dockett, 2008). Research
has provided researchers and educators with a growing awareness of children’s
aptitude for mathematical learning and provided grounds for arguing that we have
strong ethical obligations to provide mathematically purposeful environments
where young children can make sense of mathematics and develop their mathe-
matical thinking.
What such environments should look like, what mathematics should be learned
(and therefore taught), and how it should be taught, has stimulated both research
and debate. The rapid development, changing capacities and the diversity of
experiences for children aged birth to eight years of age present unique opportu-
nities and challenges for teaching and learning. We continue to find connections
between research and practice that map networks of knowledge about young
children’s mathematics learning. These in turn grow our understanding of the
impact of learning connections made and missed both in the moment and in the
future. The principal aim of this book has been to explore the common threads that
are visible when researchers, educators, and children engage in forging connections
in mathematical teaching and learning in seemingly disparate ways.
1.2 Connecting Young Children’s Mathematical Learning
The concept of connecting is endemic in the burgeoning mathematics research of

the last fifty years, indicative of the efforts being made to understand the com-
plexities that characterize mathematics teaching and learning, and resulting in a
research terrain that is ‘extensive and diverse’ (Kilpatrick, 2014, p. 271).
‘Connections’ have become synonymous with mathematical understanding, cap-
tured in Skemp’s (1978) theory of relational learning, developed as relationships are
forged across and between a myriad of networks. A sweep of theoretical models of
mathematical learning repeatedly endorses a common theme: The promotion of
mathematical understanding is achieved through children’s ability to make cogni-
tive connections to a network of previously connected experiences in multiple ways
and their ability to apply interconnected knowledge to new mathematical situations
(e.g., Clements & Sarama, 2009; Freudenthal, 1973; Haylock & Cockburn, 2008;
Kaput, 1991; Lesh & Doerr, 2003; Lehrer & Schauble, 2000). A concept inherent in
this approach is that mathematics itself provides structures that enable connections
to be made.
The idea that the discipline of mathematics consists of repeated, interconnecting
concepts is not new. Hardy (1940) stated that significant mathematical ideas are
those that can be connected with a large complex of other mathematical ideas
(p. 16). Steen (1990) defined mathematics as “about pattern and order of all sorts”
1 Forging Connections in Early Mathematics: Perspectives and Provocations 3
(p. 2). ‘Deep ideas’ found in mathematical structure, such as attributes, actions,
abstractions and dispositions Steen argued, should be connected to children’s
educational mathematical experiences in ways that are appropriate to their own
lives. The notion of a structural frame of big ideas’ or ‘powerful ideas’ as central to
mathematics and essential for mathematical sense-making is found in literature,
policy, and curriculum (Clarke, Cheeseman, & Clarke, 2006; Early Years Learning
Framework (DEEWR, 2009; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
(NCTM), 2000; Perry & Dockett, 2012). Although what defines these ideas is not
definitive, they are seen as connectors ‘between and within mathematical concepts
and actions’ (AAMT, 2009, p. 4). The current work of Mulligan and Mitchelmore
(2016) continues to highlight that educational attention and connection to mathe-
matical pattern and structure is pivotal to young children’s mathematical learning.
As a result of this research, we have a better understanding of experiences that
positively and negatively impact children’s mathematical learning and therefore a
broader understanding of the connections educators need to be mindful of and work
to build. Coherence between an educator’s network of mathematical connections
and pedagogical actions he or she takes was found to support children to make their
own connections to mathematical ideas and methods (Askew, Rhodes, Brown,
William, & Johnson, 1997). We know the importance of the reciprocal relationship
between connected mathematical knowledge in teaching and learning. This con-
necting knowledge has continued to grow, visible in the seminal work of Shulman
(1986), Ball (1990), Ball, Thames, and Phelps (2008), and Rowland, Turner,
Thwaites, and Huckstep (2009). Rowland et al.’s Knowledge Quartet pays partic-
ular attention to ‘making connections,’ emphasizing the logical and coherent nature
of mathematics as a discipline, the need for pedagogy to connect to its concepts and
procedures and for planned new learning to be synchronized and linked to chil-
dren’s former learning. For very young children, this entails educators working to
connect their informal and intuitive knowledge to new mathematical experiences
and new knowledge.
For children in prior-to-school settings, it can be particularly challenging to
make connections to mathematics in environments where learning can be philo-
sophically and theoretically misaligned with school-based settings. Conversely, for
children in the early years of school, challenges lie in negotiating the theoretical and
pedagogical approaches to teaching increasingly complex mathematics. Children
from birth to 8 years experience multiple transitions as a result of the grouping
children by age, creating complexities that are spotlighted in the critical work on
children’s transitioning to school. Characteristics of transition including opportu-
nities, aspirations, expectations, and entitlements were identified by the Transition
to School Position Statement (Educational Transitions and Change Research Group
(ETC), 2011). As our colleagues in the first book in this series reminded us,
mathematics education plays a major role in children’s transition as they move into
their first year of school. It is worth considering here too that these characteristics
accompany times of change in young children’s lives across. All children from birth
4 V. Kinnear et al.
to eight years face the challenge of their existing mathematical knowledge, ability,
and potential being recognized in educational environments, and require engaging
activities that advance their mathematical development with integrity and dignity.
Forging connections to young children’s cultural, social, emotional, and neuro-
logical dimensions of learning therefore take on particular importance.
1.3 The Need for Purposeful Connections
Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNESCO, 1989), young
children are deemed to have a right to education. The importance of children’s
development in the first few years of life is widely recognized and internationally
promoted (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), 2017). As a consequence, research evidence as to the value the early
years hold for children’s overall development and well-being and research into the
role of families in children’s early learning has also gained momentum (Phillipson,
Gervasoni, & Sullivan, 2016). Further support is found in interdisciplinary research
such as neuroscience that highlights the connections forged between children’s
sensory experiences and their physical and social experiences in particular. We are
therefore aware of the critical function played by connections between environment
and children’s interaction with it, particularly in the development of neurological
pathways (McCain, Mustard, & McCuaig, 2011). Psychology research further
supports theories that young children’s actions are focused on sourcing physical and
social structure, that is, children are seeking connections in order to make sense and
find meaning (Sommer, 2012). From this, we can infer that young children are
purposeful in their search for meaning.
The purposeful role of children’s actions in their sense-making underpins current
theoretical explanations of mathematical learning, including constructivism and
social constructivism. Principles found in Clements and Sarama’s (2009, 2014)
‘Learning Trajectory’ work, for example, propose networks of mathematical
learning with synergies and interplays between cognitive and environmental ele-
ments including sequenced instructional tasks, hierarchical progressions in math-
ematical developmental, and cultural connections. English (2004) emphasizes the
need for children to be supported in establishing relational connections between
various mathematical representations that are central to success in analogical and
mathematical reasoning. Reiterating this in 2016, English (2016) refocuses on
pedagogical connections needed in problem posing and solving practices. Such
pedagogical practices can enable a balance to be found between cognitive demand
and capacity, using approaches that are mindful of children’s existing knowledge
and context of understanding. In these ways, we can not only acknowledge young
children’s existing mathematical competence, but also find ways to ‘bootstrap’ and
construct conceptual connections so that learning potential can be surfaced.
Common features of programs shown to be effective in supporting young
children’s access to mathematical ideas connect with children’s current mathe-
matical knowledge and interests, extend children’s play into planned mathematical
experiences, incorporate activities that are cognizant of children’s development, and
importantly, connect children with a competent adult (Moss et al., 2016). What is
clear from the current mathematics education research is that young children’s
mathematical competency is consistently underestimated, with valuable learning
opportunities unrealized as a result; none more so than for children aged birth to
three years.
Recent reviews of mathematics education research highlight that the focus in
early years mathematics literature is in preschool and the early years of school,
capturing children aged from approximately four to eight years (e.g., Moss et al.,
2016) and as a global community we have gained a great deal of knowledge in
recent decades. Mathematics education research on the mathematical learning and
teaching of very young children aged birth to three years is less prominent. There
are significant numbers of studies on the mathematical learning of very young
children; however, these are found predominantly in the disciplines of psychology
and educational neuroscience. These studies provide important research evidence
about the complexity and structures of the brain and their relationship to learning
(e.g., van der van der Meulen, Krabbendam, & de Ruyter, 2015); however, the
connections between this research and educational practice appears troubled from
both sides. Fischer, Goswami, and Geake (2010) argue that neurological research
should be both scientifically sound and connected to teaching and learning in
educational settings to be of educational use in practice and policy. What can be
added to this is that mathematics education research needs to be as serious in
connecting to existing research in these fields. A great deal more rigorous debate is
needed about the purpose of mathematical leaning from birth and how this can
inform both research and practice. Empirical research is needed to develop a body
of sound evidence about what can and should be learned, and what pedagogical
practices are possible for relevant and meaningful mathematical learning to be
inclusive of children aged birth to three years.
1.4 Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Gaps

and Disconnections
There is a schism between knowledge of the body and brain’s role in children’s
processing and use of mathematics gained from research in neuroscience, psy-
chology and related fields, and the paucity of pedagogical knowledge from math-
ematics education research as to how we can provide worthwhile opportunities for
young children to learn mathematics. Education researchers are already moving,
6 V. Kinnear et al.
investigating transdisciplinary gaps in knowledge in specific areas of mathematics

learning (see Bruce et al., 2016). The schism extends to the philosophical and
arguably political divide that appears in response to seeing mathematics learning as
a continuum that begins at birth. If mathematics learning begins at birth, what
should mathematics teaching look like and who are children’s teachers? The first
book in this series investigated the transitioning children experience in their
mathematics learning between prior-to-school and school learning (Perry,
McDonald, & Gervasoni, 2015). It raised critical issues on the very real impact
transitioning to school has on all participants in the process, which in turn raises
questions about the mathematical learning children experience across the
prior-to-school years, including very young children. Can all periods of a child’s
life in their early years be informed by a close examination of opportunities,
entitlements, aspirations, and expectations? How do we approach a child’s right to
mathematics education with integrity and substance?
This book, the second book in the Springer Early Mathematics Learning and
Development series, aims in part to challenge a reductive perspective on the value
of the mathematical teaching and learning for children from birth to eight years, and
specifically from birth to three years, a view that has historically pervaded math-
ematics education research. We urge mathematics education researchers to forge
reciprocal interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research connections in order to
find ways to connect to the mathematical learning needs of all children aged birth to
eight years. This book connects to the first edited by Perry et al. (2015). Their focus
on the theoretical and practical considerations implications of children mathematics
learning in transitioning to school highlighted the importance of children’s
prior-to-school mathematics learning, particularly the role of home and community.
1.5 Using This Book: Forging Connections
1.5.1 Terminology: Naming the Early Years
Early childhood as defined by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and

Development (OECD) (2001) and UNESCO (2017) is persons aged between birth
and eight years. The early childhood sector is inevitably organized around chil-
dren’s ages, more commonly birth to age two (babies and toddlers), three to five
years (before formal schooling commences), and five to eight years (the first
three years of formal schooling). The literature is replete with multiple descriptions
that reflect this, and so for language consistency, the book chapters and their
keywords use the following terms to describe early childhood organizing structures:
• young children, early years, and early childhood—birth to eight years
• prior-to-school—prior to formal schooling, from birth to age five years
• very young children—birth to two years
• preschool—three years to school entry age, from three to five years
• early years of school—the first three years of formal schooling from five to eight
years
1.5.2 Approaching the Book
This book aimed to weave threads of connections through disparate chapters, and
the authors were asked to consider the ways their work, and so their chapters, could
contribute to this. The two Contents pages provide two ways to approach reading
the book. The first lists the chapters in alphabetical order by the last name of the
first author and the set of keywords for that chapter. The chapter title and keywords
provide insight into the identified connections within the chapter. The second
provides a table that connects the chapters together using the keywords. This
enables the reader to look at a keyword and see which chapters have connections to
that idea, highlighting the connections between chapters. We pick up these chapter
connections and expand on these in the next sections of this chapter.
We hope that by highlighting different perspectives on unifying themes that the
central tenet of the book will be visible: that there is important work to be done in
forging connections in young children’s mathematical learning. In calling for
chapters, we were struck by how little research is currently undertaken into
mathematics learning for children aged birth to three years. We were struck also by
authors’ reactions when approached to contribute to the book as many were sur-
prised, and respectfully but firmly of the view, that a contribution was not possible
as ‘mathematics isn’t my area.’ These responses belie the very real and important
opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and for attention to be focused on
the mathematics learning experiences of all young children from multiple per-
spectives. We need to be thinking about the mathematical experiences young
children can access in the moment and also how we can plan to extend their
mathematical horizons (Ball et al., 2008).
The choices educators make about the mathematical content, processes and
dispositions they choose to foster in early learning environments are important, and
have very real impact on children’s immediate and long-term future. With these
aspects in mind, we highlight some of the significant connections in young chil-
dren’s mathematical teaching and learning that are foregrounded in the book.
Chapter connections that relate to the ideas are in brackets, but we ask that you
consider the connections as common threads that should be visible in both research
and teaching.
8 V. Kinnear et al.
1.6 Forging Connections with Children’s Lives

and Worlds
Recent research in early childhood mathematics education in Australasia reflects the

movement toward an examination of the environmental, relational, and sociocul-
tural practices around mathematics (MacDonald, Goff, Dockett, & Perry, 2016). It
has been well documented that the environmental context of early childhood
mathematics education extends beyond the physical classroom or child center and
into the sites where children live and learn (Perry, Gervasoni, & Dockett, 2012),
factors that can be predictive of children’s mathematical achievement (Chap. 12). It
is therefore important to consider the mathematical capital that young children
possess before beginning formal education, including acknowledging the ‘broad
range of formal mathematics knowledge that many children construct’ (Perry, 2013,
p. 344) in home and preschool contexts, and children’s interests in and capacity to
engage with mathematical ideas (Chap. 2). Connecting children’s early and varied
mathematical representations to mathematical concepts (Chaps. 4 and 8) and rec-
ognizing the mathematical capacity children bring to mathematical judgments
(Chaps. 11 and 14) can enable educators to connect to children’s existing knowl-
edge and extend their mathematical experiences in prior-to-school, preschool, and
the early years of school settings.
In addition to recognizing the social and cultural capital that young children
bring with them into more formal educational contexts, parents and families should
also be viewed as a source of capital and acknowledged for the contributions they
can and do make to their child’s education (Chap. 10) and form part of the con-
tinuum of children’s mathematical learning (Chaps. 7 and 14). Research has shown
that there are a number of positive consequences associated with family involve-
ment in a child’s education, including improving levels of student health, increasing
academic achievement, fostering positive attitudes toward learning and school, and
increasing parent–child interaction (Peressini, 2000). Despite the benefits, there is
widespread evidence to show that parents often feel uninformed about contempo-
rary mathematical educational practices and limited in their ability to notice and
support mathematical learning at home (e.g., Muir, 2012; Pritchard, 2004). Other
research, however, shows that parents are keen to encourage and support their
children in their mathematics education, including those from low SES and cul-
turally different backgrounds (e.g., Anthony & Walshaw, 2007; Muir, 2009).
Mathematical practices and children’s engagement flow from the decisions that
are made by adults and educators about the purpose, content, and processes of the
experiences they offer. We ask then, what concepts and processes should be
foregrounded for successful learning? How are we to connect to what children
already have by way of mathematical interests and competencies? (Chaps. 3, 7, 9,
10, 13, and 14). What do we notice about these and the cultural knowledge that
underpins their mathematical play and engagement with mathematical concepts?
‘Funds of knowledge,’ (attributed to Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) is
defined as ‘the historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of
knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and

well-being’ (p. 133). When educators access this knowledge (Chap. 9), they are
better equipped to provide culturally responsive and meaningful experiences for
children that tap into their prior knowledge (Lopez, 2006). Increasing involvement
of parents in partnerships with educators can connect children’s mathematical
experiences at school to home. Successful initiatives to forge these connections can
increase parental understanding of contemporary mathematics education practices
and strengthen the cultural relationships between home and educational environ-
ment (Chap. 9).
Play can provide powerful insights into children’s mathematical knowledge, and
while informal mathematics may differ considerably from standard ‘school’
mathematics, though children’s cultural knowledge and mathematical texts can
reveal considerable mathematical understandings (Chap. 13). Educators play an
important role in building connections between young children’s representations
and their conceptual development in mathematics through play-based activities.
The structure and design of mathematical activities, and how they direct children’s
attention to mathematical content can capitalize on children’s learning from
everyday experiences (Chaps. 3, 8, and 14). Mathematical connections can be
found in young children’s experiences that are accompanied by mathematically
generated representations, including language, gesture, and the context of play, and
these can yield helpful insights into their mathematical thinking and reasoning and
play an important role in children’s mathematical learning (Chaps. 4, 7, and 10).
When considering children’s play-based experiences and everyday experiences,
attention should be given to the mathematical authenticity of children’s mathe-
matical activity that such experiences provide (Chap. 2).
1.7 Forging Connections to Mathematics History

and Culture
Realistic Mathematics Education [RME] and the work of Freudenthal (1905–1990)

and colleagues (see for example Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, 2001) have fueled and
influenced mathematical debate, research, and practice for decades. As a reform
approach to mathematics education, RME emphasizes conceptual understanding
and concept development in mathematical learning. The core of the approach is
mathematizing that focuses attention on how realistic situations that can be used to
generate mathematical learning and develop a series of connections between con-
crete and abstract conceptual mathematical models. RME was generated by
rebellion against mathematics being taught as a disconnected, systematic ‘product’
discipline that children ‘received.’ Instead, mathematics was taken as first and
foremost a human activity, meaning that mathematical learning should be an active
experience where real-life problems require mathematical concepts and strategies to
be organized and mathematized in order for the problem to be solved (Van den
10 V. Kinnear et al.
Heuvel-Panhuizen, 2001). The mathematization process therefore aims to provide a

‘guided reinvention’ of mathematical development that children can access in order
to make meaning of experiences mathematically (Chaps. 4, 6, 8, and 12). This in
turn enables the integrated nature of mathematical relationships to be revealed and
refined as children develop conceptual models that bridge informal and formal
mathematics and share strategies and solutions (Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, 2001).
Mathematizing reflects a move to a more holistic approach to teaching and
learning that is relevant for early childhood. The process of mathematizing is a
direct response to experiences that disconnect mathematical learning from mathe-
matical processes, distorting the value and purpose of mathematics. How can we
engage children in the exploration and experience of the evolution of mathematics
concepts? How can experiences be designed that can provide conceptual bridges
between concrete mathematical experience and more formal generalized mathe-
matical concepts, symbols, and signs? (Chaps. 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8). At the heart of
mathematizing is mathematics that emerges from children’s interaction with their
environment, where children are encouraged to develop their contextual tools for
solving real-life mathematical problems (Chaps. 4, 5, 6, and 8). Experiences should
enable children to have sustained engagement with mathematical concepts and
build mathematical relationships over time. In highlighting an approach to how
mathematics has come to be, mathematizing raises deeper questions about how
children gain mathematical knowledge. We must then make pedagogical choices;
what mathematics, taught when, and taught how (Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 13).
1.8 Forging Connections to Mathematics Ideas
Early years mathematics research has historically been polarizing. Young children
are seen either as limited mathematically (a focus on what they are unable to do) or
as mathematically capable and therefore under challenged. These perspectives
create both tension and opportunities: What are appropriate pedagogical practices
that can recognize children’s capacity, and enrich and extend children’s existing
mathematical knowledge without compromising their entitlement to playful edu-
cation that foster well-being? Mathematical concept development can be supported
through educators’ choices of objects (Chaps. 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 14), in the
structure of teaching activities (Chaps. 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 11), and the children’s
attention and intention to learning (Chap. 2). The thoughtful and careful choices of
narratives and materials educators’ make are essential tools for teaching mathe-
matics in the early years. They are tools for educators to connect children’s daily
experiences in informal mathematical knowledge to the construction of new
mathematical concepts (Chaps. 6, 7, 13, and 14).
How we view mathematics has much to do with how we view ourselves as
mathematics learners, educators, and researchers (Chap. 9). This in turn influences
theoretical, content and pedagogical choices and decisions in research and educa-
tional settings (Chap. 2). Thinking about mathematics as an abstract structured
discipline demands that we define what is at the core of the structure, particularly
for young children who are building from the ground up. If, as many chapter
authors have argued, mathematics is a human activity, socially developed and able
to be applied in real and abstract ways, then we have a basis for determining how
the core concepts, processes, and relationships can be identified, accessed, and
learned. Children’s activity with mathematics, that is, active experiences with core
mathematical concepts shift attention from passive to active learning, one where
knowledge is ‘the productive achievement of the student’ in interaction with others
(Wittmann, 2005, p. 94). Learning in this frame requires activities where focused
but flexible interaction with mathematical processes, procedures, and content is
required through investigation of real or mathematical situations (Freudenthal,
1973). This challenges us to think about what mathematics is, and what mathe-
matics education in early childhood is. We ask: What criteria do we use to deter-
mine the mathematical content of young children’s mathematical experiences, what
are ‘big ideas’ that influence this? (Chap. 7). Have we created an artificial divide
between pure and applied mathematics in young children’s mathematical learning?
(Chap. 2). In what ways do our decisions on the design of children’s mathematical
experiences connect or disconnect children from access to the abstract structure and
pattern of mathematics as a discipline? (Chaps. 2, 3, 5, 6, 11, and 14).
Abstract mathematical concepts or properties can be developed using mental and
physical processes. Young children can access a range of ways to connect their
learning to the abstract forms in measurement, geometry (Chaps. 5 and 7), number
(Chaps. 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, and 14), and data and statistics (Chap. 11). Powerful
connectors are found in visualization (Chaps. 5, 7, and 8) and accompanying
gesture (Chaps. 4, 5, 7, and 8), representations (Chaps. 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, and 14),
language (Chaps. 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, and 13), and reasoning (Chaps. 3, 5, 7, 11, 12, 11,
and 14). Tasks that stimulate deep spatial insights in children’s early geometry
learning and young children’s ability to use visualization can connect across geo-
metric concepts (Chap. 4). Spatial awareness and shape can connect and traverse
the bridge between informal learning and teaching for geometric understanding
(Chap. 6). Language, gesture, and visualization can act as mediators between
concrete experiences and abstract thinking, and informal learning opportunities can
be extended into challenging and relevant learning in home and educational envi-
ronments (Chap. 7).
Realizing the mathematical potential in informal learning opportunities and
planning for relevant mathematical tasks requires an alignment between the
learning environment that is created and an educator’s mathematical knowledge and
understanding. Educators’ mathematical identities and their perceived roles as
mathematics educators impact developing relevant mathematical content and
meaningful experiences for children (Chap. 8). Transformative change is possible
when professional development challenges conceptions about mathematics and
mathematical identity, which can in turn connect or disconnect educators to
meaningful mathematical practices with children. Educators’ theoretical knowledge
can therefore be predictors for successful mathematical learning with young chil-
dren (Chap. 11). To consider this is a salient reminder that young children’s
opportunities are wide-ranging in their type and impact and are predictive of
children’s ability to realize their mathematical learning potential. Mathematical
learning and the role of interdisciplinary knowledge in teaching and learning are
intimately connected. Mathematical knowledge and collaboration should guide
early years’ mathematics policy, practice, and professional development, and we
argue, should underpin research in mathematics education in early childhood,
particularly for children aged birth to three years.
1.9 A Final Note on Reading This Book
This is a book for reading in multiple ways, and to read with a view to making
connections between your own knowledge and understanding and that which is
offered in each chapter. To support your own connection making and to highlight
the many ways that seemingly dissimilar chapters can connect, there are two
contents pages. The first provides a list of the chapters, which are in alphabetical
order by the last name of the first author. Next to each chapter listing is a list of
keywords identified by the authors. The second contents page provides a grid that
groups chapters under common theme keywords.
The concluding chapter in this book asks us to consider ‘connection metaphors’
in mathematics, along with the time it takes to develop strong connections and the
mathematical purpose of the connections we seek. We hope you will be inspired to
reflect on the connections you forge, whether in research or practice, and to con-
sider new connecting possibilities.
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Authors Biography
Dr. Virginia Kinnear is Lecturer in early childhood education at Flinders University in South
Australia. She worked as a solicitor for 10 years before coming to early childhood education
through studying and teaching Montessori education (3–6 years) in the USA. She then qualified
and taught in early childhood teaching qualification in Australia and has 18-years experience in
early childhood and tertiary teaching. Virginia’s Ph.D. focused on statistical reasoning in early
childhood and her research and teaching interests are in all aspects of mathematics learning. She is
particularly interested in young children’s statistical learning and thinking, the development of
critical and ethical thinking, and the intellectual attributes and processes that support mathematical
engagement.
Dr. Mun Yee Lai is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics at the Australian Catholic University. She
has extensive experience and lectures in both primary and secondary mathematics education. She
conducts research into pre-service teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching, teaching for
mathematizing, using Variation Theory in Learning Study and Chinese primary children’s
misconception in decimal numbers. Recently, she has begun to explore the application of Planned
Behavior Theory for understanding school learners’ mathematics learning intention.
Dr. Tracey Muir is a Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education at the University of Tasmania.
Her research interests include effective teaching for numeracy, problem solving in mathematics,
the use of ICT in mathematics, and parental involvement in mathematics education. She has
published over 40 journal articles and conference papers and was a previous co-editor of
Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom. She is a past Vice President (Development) of
Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (MERGA). She has presented seminars
and workshops at state, national, and international conferences and is particularly passionate about
working with teachers to enhance their classroom numeracy practices and engaging children in
mathematics.
Chapter 2
Early Mathematics Education: A Plea
for Mathematically Founded Conceptions
Virginia Kinnear and Erich Ch. Wittmann
Abstract What is mathematics and what is mathematics education in early

childhood? This theoretical chapter draws attention to distinctions and relationships
between applied and pure mathematics and provides a provocation for considering
what each offers when evaluating the authenticity of mathematical activity. The
implications of these differences in how mathematics education are positioned and
framed in early childhood are discussed using a number of examples to illustrate
this. The chapter challenges perceptions by educators that mathematical experiences
for prior-to-school learning must be contextualized in ‘everyday’ experiences and
offers other ways of connecting young children’s mathematical education to
mathematics as a system with structure and abstract forms and patterns. The chapter
draws attention to and pleads for mathematically founded conceptions to underpin
the context and content of early childhood mathematics education.

Keywords Mathematical structure Conceptual understanding

Design Mathematics activities Play Pure and applied mathematics
Early childhood
2.1 Introduction—Corruptio Optimi Pessima

(The Corruption of the Best Is the Worst)
When Friedrich Froebel founded kindergartens 170 years ago, he positioned

mathematics as integral to all learning, as it ‘is the expression of life as such:
therefore its nature may be studies in life, and life may be studied with its help’
(2005, p. 206). His deliberate integration of elements of mathematics into
V. Kinnear (&)
Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
e-mail: virginia.kinnear@flinders.edu.au
E. Ch.Wittmann
TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany
e-mail: wittmann@math.tu-dortmund.de
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 17

V. Kinnear et al. (eds.), Forging Connections in Early Mathematics Teaching
and Learning, Early Mathematics Learning and Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7153-9_2
18 V. Kinnear and E. Ch. Wittmann
educators’ work with children is visibly demonstrated by his geometric ‘gifts’ and
‘occupations,’ which embody his philosophy that mathematics learning should be
physical and dynamic. Froebel’s gifts are a curriculum of exercises using specifi-
cally designed materials for children to work with. The gifts were structured to
systematically develop, and logically connect knowledge of fundamental mathe-
matical forms by drawing attention to the attributes and qualities of the objects
children worked with. Beliefs that young children are both interested in mathe-
matics and have capacity for mathematics learning are experiencing a resurgence in
international policy, curriculum and practice, with increasing recognition of, and
attention to the importance of early mathematical education (see McDonald, Goff,
Dockett, & Perry, 2016, for a recent review of Australasian early childhood
mathematics research). Such attention is found even in Germany where the ruling
philosophy in early education over the past forty years has explicitly excluded any
connections with school subjects. In Australia, the prior-to-school curriculum, the
Early Years Learning Framework, captures mathematics education under a
numeracy umbrella and subsumes it into an effective communication learning
outcome along with literacy (DEEWR, 2009). The increased interest in young
children’s mathematical learning, and hence teaching, has prompted the authors to
consider the purpose and substance of young children’s mathematics education and
the consequences that must follow an educator’s decisions about these, that is, the
mathematical learning context and content that young children are offered. In doing
so, the authors attempt to delineate a position which enables mathematics educators
to evaluate the mathematical substance of materials that are offered to children and
the implications of these evaluations for early childhood mathematics education.
The renewed interest in mathematical education for young children is a positive
sign, however, it does not by itself guarantee that the development of theoretical
and pedagogical knowledge and understanding will move in a positive direction;
one that will recognize children’s existing potential and foster their early mathe-
matical learning through mathematically informed and structured experiences. On
the contrary, disciplines that have the biggest impact on our understanding of early
mathematical learning, such as psychology, neuroscience, health and sociology,
have provided evidence and fueled varied views about the why, what, and how of
mathematical learning in both public policy and public perception. Without a
critical perspective across the current range of available knowledge about mathe-
matics teaching and learning there is the very real potential for misrepresentation or
for misleading perspectives to gain favor in education. Conceptions of early
mathematics and mathematical learning, such as ‘developmentally appropriate,
‘child-centered,’ ‘playful’ and ‘active’ are widely found in current mathematics
education theory and have value theoretically and pedagogically for children’s
learning. What we argue is that on their own, these conceptions do not have an
inherent perception of mathematics as a discipline. As a result, their integration into
mathematical learning and teaching are not inherently cognizant of how the dis-
cipline of mathematics is represented in pedagogical practice, and so distort its
educative purpose and possibilities. For these reasons, we argue, therefore, any
educational decision that does not critically evaluate the mathematical purpose and
2 Early Mathematics Education: A Plea … 19
mathematical concepts at the foundation of early childhood mathematics educa-

tional experiences are not in children’s best long-term interests. We are troubling
the very purpose of early mathematics education.
2.2 Placing Mathematics Knowledge at the Core of Early

Mathematics Education
Increased interest in young children’s mathematics learning has coincided with a

renewed interest in what constitutes knowledge and about the purpose of education.
The work of Young (2010a, 2010b) and Young and Muller (2010, 2013, 2016), for
example, considers the current tensions between knowledge, theory, policy, and
education. They draw attention to disciplinary differences in internal coherence,
concepts, content, and skills, and the ways different disciplines reach agreement
about how reliable, stable objective knowledge (truth) is achieved and shared. From
this perspective, a discipline’s structure reveals ‘hierarchies of abstraction’ formed
from conceptual development and maturation. Mathematics exemplifies a discipline
with ‘long sequences of hierarchically-related concepts’ (Young & Muller, 2010,
p. 21). There are reasons therefore to ask that we reconsider the role of specialist
disciplinary knowledge in education. Such knowledge Young and Muller argue is
not accessible or developed through informal experiences alone. Knowledge instead
emerges from but is ‘not reducible to the context in which it is produced and
acquired’ (2016, p. 67). This is a leading point as it highlights the role of the
learning experience in the way knowledge is acquired, but also raises questions
about the objectivity of the disciplinary knowledge that is engaged in the learning
experience. How then should we evaluate the disciplinary knowledge that should be
embedded and emerge from a mathematical learning experience?
If we consider mathematics education to be a design science (Wittmann, 1998,
2005), there are synergies with the perspectives provided by Young and Muller.
Both perspectives position mathematics as a discipline with unique qualities, pro-
cesses, and aims, which if placed at the core of mathematics education generate
consequences for how we see mathematics itself, and therefore how we connect
mathematics with mathematics education. Wittmann has long argued that it is only
when mathematics education researchers’ work with the disciplinary specific
structure, content and purposes of mathematics, that what is needed to design
learning environments that will engage children in mathematics learning can be
uncovered and developed. This approach positions the dynamic but cohesive
structure of mathematics as the driver of mathematical processes and procedures
that can frame the context in which they are developed. It is the structure and the
accompanying attributes that are connected to mathematics we argue, that should
form the substance of a mathematical learning environment for young children. In a
situation where mathematics is placed at the core of the learning experience, it is
crucial to adopt a critical position using mathematical criteria. With mathematics at
the core of analysis, it is possible to ‘sort the wheat from the chaff’ when
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Title: Early autumn
Author: Louis Bromfield
Release date: December 14, 2023 [eBook #72406]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY

AUTUMN ***
Chapter I, Chapter II
Chapter III, Chapter IV, Chapter V, Chapter VI, Chapter
VII, Chapter VIII, Chapter IX, Chapter X.
Louis Bromfield
EARLY AUTUMN
Copyright, 1926, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company
All rights reserved
FOR
LAURA CANFIELD WOOD
EARLY AUTUMN
CHAPTER I
There was a ball in the old Pentland house because for the first time in
nearly forty years there was a young girl in the family to be introduced to
the polite world of Boston and to the elect who had been asked to come on
from New York and Philadelphia. So the old house was all bedizened with
lanterns and bunches of late spring flowers, and in the bare, white-painted,
dignified hallway a negro band, hidden discreetly by flowers, sat making
noisy, obscene music.
Sybil Pentland was eighteen and lately returned from School in Paris,
whither she had been sent against the advice of the conservative members
of her own family, which, it might have been said, included in its
connections most of Boston. Already her great-aunt, Mrs. Cassandra
Struthers, a formidable woman, had gone through the list of eligible young
men—the cousins and connections who were presentable and possessed of
fortunes worthy of consideration by a family so solidly rich as the
Pentlands. It was toward this end that the ball had been launched and the
whole countryside invited, young and old, spry and infirm, middle-aged and
dowdy—toward this end and with the idea of showing the world that the
family had lost none of its prestige for all the lack of young people in its
ranks. For this prestige had once been of national proportions, though now
it had shrunk until the Pentland name was little known outside New
England. Rather, it might have been said that the nation had run away from
New England and the Pentland family, leaving it stranded and almost
forgotten by the side of the path which marked an unruly, almost barbaric
progress away from all that the Pentland family and the old house
represented.
Sybil’s grandfather had seen to it that there was plenty of champagne;
and there were tables piled with salads and cold lobster and sandwiches and
hot chicken in chafing-dishes. It was as if a family whose whole history had
been marked by thrift and caution had suddenly cast to the winds all
semblance of restraint in a heroic gesture toward splendor.
But in some way, the gesture seemed to be failing. The negro music
sounded wild and spirited, but also indiscreet and out of place in a house so
old and solemn. A few men and one or two women known for their
fondness for drink consumed a great deal of champagne, but only dulness
came of it, dulness and a kind of dead despair. The rich, the splendorous,
the gorgeous, the barbaric, had no place in rooms where the kind Mr.
Longfellow and the immortal Messrs. Emerson and Lowell had once sat
and talked of life. In a hallway, beneath the gaze of a row of ancestors
remarkable for the grimness of their faces, the music appeared to lose its
quality of abandon; it did not belong in this genteel world. On the fringes of
the party there was some drunkenness among the undergraduates imported
from Cambridge, but there was very little gaiety. The champagne fell upon
barren ground. The party drooped.
Though the affair was given primarily to place Sybil Pentland upon the
matrimonial market of this compact world, it served, too, as an introduction
for Thérèse Callendar, who had come to spend the summer at Brook
Cottage across the stony meadows on the other side of the river from
Pentlands; and as a reintroduction of her mother, a far more vivid and
remarkable person. Durham and the countryside thereabouts was familiar
enough to her, for she had been born there and passed her childhood within
sight of the spire of the Durham town meeting-house. And now, after an
absence of twenty years, she had come back out of a world which her own
people—the people of her childhood—considered strange and ungenteel.
Her world was one filled with queer people, a world remote from the quiet
old house at Pentlands and the great brownstone houses of Commonwealth
Avenue and Beacon Street. Indeed, it was this woman, Sabine Callendar,
who seemed to have stolen all the thunder at the ball; beside her, neither of
the young girls, her own daughter nor Sybil Pentland, appeared to attract
any great interest. It was Sabine whom every one noticed, acquaintances of
her childhood because they were devoured by curiosity concerning those
missing twenty years, and strangers because she was the most picturesque
and arresting figure at the ball.
It was not that she surrounded herself by adoring young men eager to
dance with her. She was, after all, a woman of forty-six, and she had no
tolerance for mooning boys whose conversation was limited to bootlegging
and college clubs. It was a success of a singular sort, a triumph of
indifference.
People like Aunt Cassie Struthers remembered her as a shy and awkward
young girl with a plain face, a good figure and brick-red hair which twenty
years ago had been spoken of as “Poor Sabine’s ugly red hair.” She was a
girl in those days who suffered miserably at balls and dinners, who shrank
from all social life and preferred solitude. And now, here she was—returned
—a tall woman of forty-six, with the same splendid figure, the same long
nose and green eyes set a trifle too near each other, but a woman so striking
in appearance and the confidence of her bearing that she managed somehow
to dim the success even of younger, prettier women and virtually to
extinguish the embryonic young things in pink-and-white tulle. Moving
about indolently from room to room, greeting the people who had known
her as a girl, addressing here and there an acquaintance which she had made
in the course of the queer, independent, nomadic life she had led since
divorcing her husband, there was an arrogance in her very walk that
frightened the young and produced in the older members of Durham
community (all the cousins and connections and indefinable relatives), a
sense of profound irritation. Once she had been one of them, and now she
seemed completely independent of them all, a traitress who had flung to the
winds all the little rules of life drilled into her by Aunt Cassie and other
aunts and cousins in the days when she had been an awkward, homely little
girl with shocking red hair. Once she had belonged to this tight little world,
and now she had returned—a woman who should have been defeated and a
little declassée and somehow, irritatingly, was not. Instead, she was a
“figure” much sought after in the world, enveloped by the mysterious cloud
of esteem which surrounds such persons—a woman, in short, who was able
to pick her friends from the ranks of distinguished and even celebrated
people. It was not only because this was true, but because people like Aunt
Cassie knew it was true, that she aroused interest and even indignation. She
had turned her back upon them all and no awful fate had overtaken her;
instead, she had taken a firm hold upon life and made of it a fine, even a
glittering, success; and this is a thing which is not easily forgiven.
As she moved through the big rooms—complete and perfect from her
superbly done, burnished red hair to the tips of her silver slippers—there
was about her an assurance and an air of confidence in her own perfection
that bordered upon insolence. There was a hard radiance and beauty in the
brilliant green dress and the thin chain of diamonds that dimmed all of the
others, that made most of the women seem dowdy and put together with
pins. Undoubtedly her presence also served to dampen the gaiety. One knew
from the look in the disdainful green eyes and the faint mocking smile on
the frankly painted red mouth that she was aware of the effect she made and
was delighted with her triumph. Wherever she went, always escorted by
some man she had chosen with the air of conferring a favor, a little stir
preceded her. She was indeed very disagreeable....
If she had a rival in all the crowd that filled the echoing old house, it was
Olivia Pentland—Sybil’s mother—who moved about, alone most of the
time, watching her guests, acutely conscious that the ball was not all it
should have been. There was about her nothing flamboyant and arresting,
nothing which glittered with the worldly hardness of the green dress and the
diamonds and burnished red hair of Sabine Callendar; she was, rather, a soft
woman, of gentleness and poise, whose dark beauty conquered in a slower,
more subtle fashion. You did not notice her at once among all the guests;
you became aware of her slowly, as if her presence had the effect of stealing
over you with the vagueness of a perfume. Suddenly you marked her from
among all the others ... with a sense of faint excitement ... a pale white face,
framed by smooth black hair drawn back low over the brows in a small knot
at the back of her head. You noticed the clear, frank blue eyes, that in some
lights seemed almost black, and most of all you noticed when she spoke
that her voice was low, warm, and in a way irresistible, a voice with a
hundred shades of color. She had a way, too, of laughing, when she was
struck by the absurdity of something, that was like a child. One knew her at
once for a great lady. It was impossible to believe that she was nearly forty
and the mother of Sybil and a boy of fifteen.
Circumstance and a wisdom of her own had made of her a woman who
seemed inactive and self-effacing. She had a manner of doing things
effortlessly, with a great quietness, and yet, after one came to know her, one
felt that she missed little which took place within sight or hearing—not only
the obvious things which any stupid person might have noticed, but the
subtle, indefinite currents which passed from one person to another. She
possessed, it seemed, a marvelous gift for smoothing out troubles. A
security, of the sort which often marks those who suffer from a too great
awareness, enveloped and preceded her, turning to calm all the troubled
world about her. Yet she was disturbing, too, in an odd, indefinable way.
There was always a remoteness and a mystery, a sense almost of the fey. It
was only after one had known her for a long time, enveloped in the
quietness of her pleasant presence, that a faint sense of uneasiness was
born. It would occur to you, with the surprise almost of a shock, that the
woman you saw before you, the woman who was so gentle and serene, was
not Olivia Pentland at all, but a kind of clay figure which concealed, far
beneath the veneer of charm, a woman you did not know at all, who was
remote and sad and perhaps lonely. In the end, she disturbed the person of
discernment far more profoundly than the glittering, disagreeable Sabine
Callendar.
In the midst of the noise and confusion of the ball, she had been moving
about, now in this big room, now in that one, talking quietly to her guests,
watching them, seeing that all went well; and, like all the others, she was
fascinated at the spectacle of Sabine’s rebellion and triumph, perhaps even a
little amused at the childishness of such defiance in a woman of forty-six
who was clever, independent and even distinguished, who need not have
troubled to flaunt her success.
Watching Sabine, whom she knew intimately enough, she had guessed
that underneath the shell made so superbly by hairdresser, couturier and
jeweler there lay hidden an awkward, red-haired little girl who was having
her revenge now, walking roughshod over all the prejudices and traditions
of such people as Aunt Cassie and John Pentland and Cousin Struthers
Smallwood, D.D., whom Sabine always called “the Apostle to the Genteel.”
It was almost, thought Olivia, as if Sabine, even after an exile of twenty
years, was still afraid of them and that curious, undefeatable power which
they represented.
But Sabine, she knew, was observing the party at the same time. She had
watched her all the evening in the act of “absorbing” it; she knew that when
Sabine walked across from Brook Cottage the next day, she would know
everything that had happened at the ball, for she had a passion for
inspecting life. Beneath the stony mask of indifference there boiled a
perpetual and passionate interest in the intricacies of human affairs. Sabine
herself had once described it as “the curse of analysis which took all the
zest out of life.”
She was fond of Sabine as a creature unique in the realm of her
experience, one who was amusing and actually made fetishes of truth and
reality. She had a way of turning her intellect (for it was really a great
intellect) upon some tangled, hopeless situation to dissolve it somehow into
its proper elements and make it appear suddenly clear, uncomplicated and,
more often than not, unpleasant; because the truth was not always a sweet
and pleasant thing.
2
No one suffered more keenly from Sabine’s triumphant return than the
invincible Aunt Cassie. In a way, she had always looked upon Sabine, even
in the long years of her voluntary exile from the delights of Durham, as her
own property, much as she might have looked upon a dog, if, indeed, the
old lady had been able to bear the society of anything so untidy as a dog.
Childless herself, she had exercised all her theories of upbringing upon the
unfortunate orphaned little daughter of her husband’s brother.
At the moment, the old lady sat half-way down the white stairs, her
sharp, black eyes surveying the ball with a faint air of disapproval. The
noisy music made her nervous and uneasy, and the way young girls had of
using paint and powder seemed to her cheap and common. “One might as
well brush one’s teeth at the dinner-table.” Secretly, she kept comparing
everything with the ball given for herself forty years earlier, an event which
had resulted at length in the capture of Mr. Struthers. Dressed economically
(for she made it a point of honor to live on the income of her income), and
in mourning for a husband dead eight years earlier, she resembled a
dignified but slightly uneasy crow perched on a fence.
It was Sabine who observed that Aunt Cassie and her “lady companion,”
Miss Peavey, sitting on the steps together, resembled a crow and a pouter
pigeon. Miss Peavey was not only fat, she was actually bulbous—one of
those women inclined by nature toward “flesh,” who would have been fat
on a diet of sawdust and distilled water; and she had come into the family
life nearly thirty years earlier as a companion, a kind of slave, to divert
Aunt Cassie during the long period of her invalidism. She had remained
there ever since, taking the place of a husband who was dead and children
who had never been born.
There was something childlike about Miss Peavey—some people said
that she was not quite bright—but she suited Aunt Cassie to a T, for she was
as submissive as a child and wholly dependent in a financial sense. Aunt
Cassie even gave her enough to make up for the losses she incurred by
keeping a small shop in Boston devoted to the sale of “artistic” pottery.
Miss Peavey was a lady, and though penniless, was “well connected” in
Boston. At sixty she had grown too heavy for her birdlike little feet and so
took very little exercise. To-night she was dressed in a very fancy gown
covered with lace and sequins and passementerie, rather in the mode which
some one had told her was her style in the far-off days of her girlhood. Her
hair was streaked with gray and cut short in a shaggy, uneven fashion; not,
however, because short hair was chic, but because she had cut it ten years
before short hair had been heard of, in a sudden futile gesture of freedom at
the terrible moment she made her one feeble attempt to escape Aunt Cassie
and lead her own life. She had come back in the end, when her poor savings
gave out and bankruptcy faced her, to be received by Aunt Cassie with
dignified sighs and flutters as a returned and repentant prodigal. In this rôle
she had lived ever since in a state of complete subjection. She was Aunt
Cassie’s creature now, to go where Aunt Cassie ordered, to do as she was
bid, to be an ear-piece when there was at hand no one more worthy of
address.
At the sight of Sabine’s green dress and red hair moving through the big
hall below them, Aunt Cassie said, with a gleam in her eye: “Sabine seems
to be worried about her daughter. The poor child doesn’t seem to be having
a success, but I suppose it’s no wonder. The poor thing is very plain. I
suppose she got the sallow skin from her father. He was part Greek and
French.... Sabine was never popular as a young girl herself.”
And she fell to speculating for the hundredth time on the little-known
circumstances of Sabine’s unhappy marriage and divorce, turning the
morsels over and over again with a variety of speculation and the
interjection of much pious phraseology; for in Aunt Cassie’s speech God
seemed to have a hand in everything. He had a way of delivering trials and
blessings indiscriminately, and so in the end became responsible for
everything.
Indeed, she grew a bit spiteful about Sabine, for there was in the back of
her mind the memory of an encounter, a day or two earlier, when she had
been put completely to rout. It was seldom that Aunt Cassie met any one
who was a match for her, and when such an encounter took place the
memory of it rankled until she found some means of subduing the offender.
With Miss Peavey she was completely frank, for through long service this
plump, elderly virgin had come to be a sort of confessor in whose presence
Aunt Cassie wore no mask. She was always saying, “Don’t mind Miss
Peavey. She doesn’t matter.”
“I find Sabine extremely hard and worldly,” she was saying. “I would
never know her for the same modest young girl she was on leaving me.”
She sighed abysmally and continued, “But, then, we mustn’t judge. I
suppose the poor girl has had a great deal of misery. I pity her to the depths
of my heart!”
In Aunt Cassie’s speeches, in every phrase, there was always a certain
mild theatrical overtone as if she sought constantly to cast a sort of
melodramatic haze over all she said. Nothing was ever stated simply.
Everything from the sight of a pot of sour cream to the death of her husband
affected her extravagantly, to the depths of her soul.
But this brought no response from Miss Peavey, who seemed lost in the
excitement of watching the young people, her round candid eyes shining
through her pince-nez with the eagerness of one who has spent her whole
life as a “lady companion.” At moments like this, Aunt Cassie felt that Miss
Peavey was not quite bright, and sometimes said so.
Undiscouraged, she went on. “Olivia looks bad, too, to-night ... very
tired and worn. I don’t like those circles under her eyes.... I’ve thought for a
long time that she was unhappy about something.”
But Miss Peavey’s volatile nature continued to lose itself completely in
the spectacle of young girls who were so different from the girls of her day;
and in the fascinating sight of Mr. Hoskins, a fat, sentimental, middle-aged
neighbor who had taken a glass too much champagne and was talking
archly to the patient Olivia. Miss Peavey had quite forgotten herself in the
midst of so much gaiety. She did not even see the glances of Aunt Cassie in
her direction—glances which plainly said, “Wait until I get you alone!”
For a long time Aunt Cassie had been brooding over what she called
“Olivia’s strange behavior.” It was a thing which she had noticed for the
first time a month or two earlier when Olivia, in the midst of one of Aunt
Cassie’s morning calls, had begun suddenly, quietly, to weep and had left
the room without a word of explanation. It had gone from bad to worse
lately; she felt Olivia slipping away from all control directly in opposition
to her own benevolent advice. There was the matter of this very ball. Olivia
had ignored her counsels of economy and thrift, and now Aunt Cassie was
suffering, as if the champagne which flowed so freely were blood drawn
from her own veins. Not for a century, since Savina Pentland purchased a
parure of pearls and emeralds, had so much Pentland money been expended
at one time on mere pleasure.
She disapproved, too, of the youthfulness of Olivia and of Sabine.
Women of their ages ought not to look so fresh and young. There was
something vulgar, even a little improper, in a woman like Sabine who at
forty-six looked thirty-five. At thirty, Aunt Cassie herself had settled down
as a middle-aged woman, and since then she had not changed greatly. At
sixty-five, “childless and alone in the world” (save, of course, for Miss
Peavey), she was much the same as she had been at thirty in the rôle of wife
to the “trying Mr. Struthers.” The only change had been her recovery from a
state of semi-invalidism, a miracle occurring simultaneously with the
passing of Mr. Struthers.
She had never quite forgiven Olivia for being an outsider who had come
into the intricate web of life at Pentlands out of (of all places) Chicago.
Wisps of mystery and a faint sense of the alien had clung to her ever since.
Of course, it wasn’t to be expected that Olivia could understand entirely
what it meant to marry into a family whose history was so closely woven
into that of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the life of Boston. What
could it mean to Olivia that Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Lowell and Dr.
Holmes had often spent weeks at Pentlands? That Mr. Emerson himself had
come there for week-ends? Still (Aunt Cassie admitted to herself), Olivia
had done remarkably well. She had been wise enough to watch and wait
and not go ahead strewing her path with blunders.
Into the midst of these thoughts the figure of Olivia herself appeared,
moving toward the stairway, walking beside Sabine. They were laughing
over something, Sabine in the sly, mocking way she had, and Olivia
mischievously, with a suspicious twinkle in her eyes. Aunt Cassie was filled
with an awful feeling that they were sharing some joke about the people at
the ball, perhaps even about herself and Miss Peavey. Since Sabine had
returned, she felt that Olivia had grown even more strange and rebellious;
nevertheless, she admitted to herself that there was a distinction about them
both. She preferred the quiet distinction of Olivia to the violence of the
impression made by the glittering Sabine. The old lady sensed the
distinction, but, belonging to a generation which lived upon emotion rather
than analysis, she did not get to the root of it. She did not see that one felt at
once on seeing Olivia, “Here is a lady!”—perhaps, in the true sense of the
word, the only lady in the room. There was a gentleness about her and a
softness and a proud sort of poise—all qualities of which Aunt Cassie
approved; it was the air of mystery which upset the old lady. One never
knew quite what Olivia was thinking. She was so gentle and soft-spoken.
Sometimes of late, when pressing Olivia too hotly, Aunt Cassie, aware of
rousing something indefinably perilous in the nature of the younger woman,
drew back in alarm.
Rising stiffly, the old lady groaned a little and, moving down the stairs,
said, “I must go, Olivia dear,” and, turning, “Miss Peavey will go with me.”
Miss Peavey would have stayed, because she was enjoying herself,
looking down on all those young people, but she had obeyed the commands
of Aunt Cassie for too long, and now she rose, complaining faintly, and
made ready to leave.
Olivia urged them to stay, and Sabine, looking at the old lady out of
green eyes that held a faint glitter of hatred, said abruptly: “I always
thought you stayed until the bitter end, Aunt Cassie.”
A sigh answered her ... a sigh filled with implications regarding Aunt
Cassie’s position as a lonely, ill, bereft, widowed creature for whom life
was finished long ago. “I am not young any longer, Sabine,” she said. “And
I feel that the old ought to give way to the young. There comes a time....”
Sabine gave an unearthly chuckle. “Ah,” she said, in her hard voice, “I
haven’t begun to give up yet. I am still good for years.”
“You’re not a child any more, Sabine,” the old lady said sharply.
“No, certainly I’m not a child any more.” And the remark silenced Aunt
Cassie, for it struck home at the memory of that wretched scene in which
she had been put to rout so skilfully.
There was a great bustle about getting the two old ladies under way, a
great search for cloaks and scarfs and impedimenta; but at last they went
off, Aunt Cassie saying over her thin, high shoulder, “Will you say good-by
to your dear father-in-law, Olivia? I suppose he’s playing bridge with Mrs.
Soames.”
“Yes,” replied Olivia from the terrace, “he’s playing bridge with Mrs.
Soames.”
Aunt Cassie merely cleared her throat, forcibly, and with a deep
significance. In her look, as in the sound of her voice, she managed to
launch a flood of disapproval upon the behavior of old John Pentland and
old Mrs. Soames.
Bidding the driver to go very slowly, she climbed into her shabby,
antiquated motor, followed respectfully by Miss Peavey, and drove off
down the long elm-bordered drive between the lines of waiting motors.
Olivia’s “dear father-in-law” was Aunt Cassie’s own brother, but she
chose always to relate him to Olivia, as if in some way it bound Olivia more
closely, more hopelessly, into the fabric of the family.
As the two younger women reentered the house, Olivia asked, “Where’s
Thérèse? I haven’t seen her for more than an hour.”
“She’s gone home.”
“Thérèse ... gone home ... from a ball given for her!”
Olivia halted in astonishment and stood leaning against the wall, looking
so charming and lovely that Sabine thought, “It’s a sin for a woman so
beautiful to have such a life.”
Aloud Sabine said, “I caught her stealing away. She walked across to the
cottage. She said she hated it and was miserable and bored and would rather
be in bed.” Sabine shrugged her handsome shoulders and added, “So I let
her go. What difference does it make?”
“None, I suppose.”
“I never force her to do things of this sort. I had too much forcing when I
was young; Thérèse is to do exactly as she likes and be independent. The
trouble is, she’s been spoilt by knowing older men and men who talk
intelligently.” She laughed and added, “I was wrong about coming back
here. I’ll never marry her off in this part of the world. The men are all afraid
of her.”
Olivia kept seeing the absurd figure of Sabine’s daughter, small and
dark, with large burning eyes and an air of sulky independence, striding off
on foot through the dust of the lane that led back to Brook Cottage. She was
so different from her own daughter, the quiet, well-mannered Sybil.
“I don’t think she’s properly impressed by Durham,” said Olivia, with a
sudden mischievous smile.
“No ... she’s bored by it.”
Olivia paused to say good-night to a little procession of guests ... the
Pingree girls dressed alike in pink tulle; the plump Miss Perkins, who had
the finest collection of samplers in New England; Rodney Phillips, whose
life was devoted to breeding springers and behaving like a perfect English
gentleman; old Mr. Tilney, whose fortune rested on the mills of Durham and
Lynn and Salem; and Bishop Smallwood, a cousin of the Pentlands and
Sabine (whom Sabine called the Apostle of the Genteel). The Bishop
complimented Olivia on the beauty of her daughter and coquetted heavily
with Sabine. Motors rushed out from among the lilacs and syringas and
bore them away one by one.
When they had gone Sabine said abruptly, “What sort of man is this
Higgins ... I mean your head stableman?”
“A good sort,” replied Olivia. “The children are very fond of him.
Why?”
“Oh ... no reason at all. I happened to think of him to-night because I
noticed him standing on the terrace just now looking in at the ball.”
“He was a jockey once ... a good one, I believe, until he got too heavy.
He’s been with us ten years. He’s good and reliable and sometimes very
funny. Old Mr. Pentland depends on him for everything.... Only he has a
way of getting into scrapes with the girls from the village. He seems
irresistible to them ... and he’s an immoral scamp.”
Sabine’s face lighted up suddenly, as if she had made a great discovery.
“I thought so,” she observed, and wandered away abruptly to continue the
business of “absorbing” the ball.
She had asked about Higgins because the man was stuck there in her
brain, set in the midst of a strange, confused impression that disturbed a
mind usually marked by precision and clarity. She did not understand why it
was that he remained the most vivid of all the kaleidoscopic procession of
the ball. He had been an outsider, a servant, looking in upon it, and yet there
he was—a man whom she had never noticed before—vivid and clear-cut,
dominating the whole evening.
It had happened a little earlier when, standing in the windowed alcove of
the old red-paneled writing-room, she had turned her back for a moment on
the ball, to look out upon the distant marshes and the sea, across meadows
where every stone and tree and hedge was thrown into a brilliant relief by
the clarity of the moonlight and the thin New England air. And trapped
suddenly by the still and breathless beauty of the meadows and marshes and
distant white dunes, lost in memories more than twenty years old, she had
found herself thinking: “It was always like this ... rather beautiful and hard
and cold and a little barren, only I never saw it before. It’s only now, when
I’ve come back after twenty years, that I see my own country exactly as it
is.”
And then, standing there quite alone, she had become aware slowly that
she was being watched by some one. There was a sudden movement among
the lilacs that stood a little way off wrapped in thick black shadows ... the
faintest stirring of the leaves that drew her sharply back to a consciousness
of where she was and why she was there; and, focusing all her attention, she
was able to make out presently a short, stocky little figure, and a white face
peering out from among the branches, watching the dancers who moved
about inside the house. The sight produced in her suddenly a sensation of
uneasiness and a faint prickling of the skin, which slipped away presently
when she recognized the odd, prematurely wrinkled face of Higgins, the
Pentland groom. She must have seen him a dozen times before, barely
noticing him, but now she saw him with a kind of illuminating clarity, in a
way which made his face and figure unforgettable.
He was clad in the eternal riding-breeches and a sleeveless cotton shirt
that exposed the short, hairy, muscular arms. Standing there he seemed,
with his arched, firmly planted legs, like some creature rooted into the soil
... like the old apple-tree which stood in the moonlight showering the last of
its white petals on the black lawn. There was something unpleasant in the
sight, as if (she thought afterwards) she had been watched without knowing
it by some animal of an uncanny intelligence.
And then abruptly he had slipped away again, shyly, among the branches
of the lilacs ... like a faun.
Olivia, looking after Sabine as she walked away, smiled at the

knowledge of where she was bound. Sabine would go into the old writing-
room and there, sitting in a corner, would pretend that she was interested in
the latest number of the Mercure de France or some fashion paper, and all
the time she would be watching, listening, while old John Pentland and
poor battered old Mrs. Soames sat playing bridge with a pair of
contemporaries. Sabine, she knew, wanted to probe the lives of the two old
people. She wasn’t content like the others at Pentlands to go on pretending
that there had never been anything between them. She wanted to get to the
root of the story, to know the truth. It was the truth, always the truth, which
fascinated Sabine.
And Olivia felt a sudden, swift, almost poignant wave of affection for
the abrupt, grim woman, an affection which it was impossible to express
because Sabine was too scornful of all sentiment and too shut in ever to
receive gracefully a demonstration; yet she fancied that Sabine knew she
was fond of her, in the same shy, silent way that old John Pentland knew
she was fond of him. It was impossible for either of them ever to speak of
such simple things as affection.
Since Sabine had come to Durham, it seemed to Olivia that life was a
little less barren and not quite so hopeless. There was in Sabine a curious
hard, solid strength which the others, save only the old man, lacked
completely. Sabine had made some discovery in life that had set her free ...
of everything but that terrible barrier of false coldness.
In the midst of these thoughts came another procession of retreating
guests, and the sadness, slipping away from Olivia’s face, gave way to a
perfect, artificial sort of gaiety. She smiled, she murmured, “Good-night,
must you go,” and, “Good-night, I’m so glad that you liked the ball.” She
was arch with silly old men and kind to the shy young ones and repeated the
same phrases over and over again monotonously. People went away saying,
“What a charming woman Olivia Pentland is!”
Yet immediately afterward she did not remember who had passed by her.
One by one the guests departed, and presently the black musicians
packed up their instruments and went away, and at last Sybil appeared, shy
and dark, looking a little pale and tired in her clinging gown of pale green.
At sight of her daughter a little thrill of pride ran through Olivia. She was
the loveliest of all the girls at the ball, not the most flamboyant, but the
gentlest and really the most beautiful. She possessed the same slow beauty
of her mother, which enveloped one in a kind of mist that lingered long
after she herself had gone away. She was neither loud and mannish and
vulgar like the “horsey” women nor common like the girls who used too
much paint and tried to behave like women of the world. There was already
about her the timelessness that envelops a lady no matter the generation in
which she appears; there was a mystery, a sophistication and knowledge of
life which put to rout all the cheap flashiness of the others. And yet,
somehow, that same cool, shy poise and beauty frightened people. Boys
who were used to calling young girls “Good old So-and-so” found
themselves helpless before the dignity of a young girl who looked in her
green gown a little like a cool wood-nymph. It troubled Olivia profoundly,
not for herself, but because she wanted the girl to be happy—more than
that, to know the depths of happiness which she herself had sensed but
never found. It was in a way as if she saw herself again in Sybil, as if
looking back now from the pinnacle of her own experience she could guide
this younger self, standing on the brink of life, along paths less barren than
those trod by her own feet. It was so necessary that Sybil should fall in love
with a man who would make her happy. With most girls it would make little
difference one way or another, so long as they had money; if they were
unhappy or bored they would divorce their husbands and try again because
that was the rule in their world. But with Sybil, marriage would be either an
immense, incalculable happiness or a profound and hopeless tragedy.
She thought suddenly of what Sabine had said of Thérèse a little while
before. “I was wrong about coming back here. I’ll never marry her off in
this part of the world.”
It was true somehow of Sybil. The girl, in some mysterious fashion,
knew what it was she wanted; and this was not a life which was safe and
assured, running smoothly in a rigid groove fixed by tradition and
circumstance. It was not marriage with a man who was like all the other
men in his world. It went deeper than all that. She wanted somehow to get
far down beneath the surface of that life all about her, deep down where
there was a savor to all she did. It was a hunger which Olivia understood
well enough.
The girl approached her mother and, slipping her arm about her waist,
stood there, looking for all the world like Olivia’s sister.
“Have you enjoyed it?” asked Olivia.
“Yes.... It’s been fun.”
Olivia smiled. “But not too much?”
“No, not too much.” Sybil laughed abruptly, as if some humorous
memory had suddenly come to life.
“Thérèse ran away,” said her mother.
“I know ... she told me she was going to.”

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Forging Connections in Early

Mathematics Teaching and Learning 1st

Forging Connections between Computational Mathematics

For God King and People Forging Commonwealth Bonds in

Teaching and Learning Mathematics Online 1st Edition

Teaching and Learning Secondary School Mathematics

Improving Primary Mathematics Education, Teaching and

Proof Technology in Mathematics Research and Teaching

Connections in Discrete Mathematics A Celebration of

Teaching Information Literacy in Higher Education.

Forging Connections in Early

Mun Yee Lai

ISSN 2213-9273 ISSN 2213-9281 (electronic)

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

1 Forging Connections in Early Mathematics: Perspectives

9 Connecting the Mathematics Identity of Early Childhood

Chapter Title and author Keywords

Chapter Title and author Keywords

Dr. Virginia Kinnear is a Lecturer in early childhood education at Flinders

Virginia Kinnear, Mun Yee Lai and Tracey Muir

Abstract This edited book brings together an international collection of work on a

The signiﬁcance of forging connections in young children’s mathematical

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 1

children’s capacities to learn mathematics, and to widen our perspectives about

1.2 Connecting Young Children’s Mathematical Learning

The concept of connecting is endemic in the burgeoning mathematics research of

1.3 The Need for Purposeful Connections

1.4 Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Gaps

investigating transdisciplinary gaps in knowledge in speciﬁc areas of mathematics

1.5 Using This Book: Forging Connections

1.5.1 Terminology: Naming the Early Years

Early childhood as deﬁned by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and

1.5.2 Approaching the Book

1.6 Forging Connections with Children’s Lives

Recent research in early childhood mathematics education in Australasia reflects the

knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and

1.7 Forging Connections to Mathematics History

Realistic Mathematics Education [RME] and the work of Freudenthal (1905–1990)

Heuvel-Panhuizen, 2001). The mathematization process therefore aims to provide a

1.8 Forging Connections to Mathematics Ideas

1.9 A Final Note on Reading This Book

Virginia Kinnear and Erich Ch. Wittmann

Abstract What is mathematics and what is mathematics education in early

2.1 Introduction—Corruptio Optimi Pessima

When Friedrich Froebel founded kindergartens 170 years ago, he positioned

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 17

mathematical concepts at the foundation of early childhood mathematics educa-

2.2 Placing Mathematics Knowledge at the Core of Early

Increased interest in young children’s mathematics learning has coincided with a

Title: Early autumn

Author: Louis Bromfield

Release date: December 14, 2023 [eBook #72406]

Original publication: NYC: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1926

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY

All rights reserved

LAURA CANFIELD WOOD

Olivia, looking after Sabine as she walked away, smiled at the

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