Experiences of Educational Support for Mathematical High-Ability Children in Finland : A Netnography of Parental Perspective from ECE to the School Context

Abstract

Children who are high achievers in mathematics are statistically uncommon. For this reason, very little evidence is available on how this group is supported in preschool and later on in school contexts. In Finland, the National Curriculum for Early Childhood Education (FNAE, National core curriculum for early chilhdood education and care 2016. Regulations and guidelines 2017: 10. Finnish National Agency for Education, 2017) and Basic Education (2014) requires teachers to cultivate these children’s talents. In this paper, 10 families in Finland were studied with the help of netnograpy. The objective was to describe parent’s perceptions of the types of support mathematically high-ability students received in the preschool and school context in Finland. The results show that the parents were mostly unsatisfied with the support schools gave to their high-ability children in mathematics, even though these children were recognised in early years as high-ability children. The type/level of support children received to develop their abilities further seemed to be more dependent on their teacher or the teacher’s view on the child’s needed support in mathematics.