Dissertation: Affective Relations to Mathematics in Swedish Early Childhood Education

On March 27, Laura Galeano will defend her doctoral thesis Affective Relations to Mathematics in Swedish Early Childhood Education. Here, she talks about her work.

What made you choose to write your dissertation about children’s affective relations toward mathematics?

I reached out to the senior researcher who published the doctoral position in didactics with a focus on cognitive development and learning

and asked whether there was a topic his research group was particularly interested in exploring. His response was math anxiety.

Given the iterative nature of writing a compilation thesis—which involves conducting studies that respond to the ongoing findings of previous ones and eventually bringing them together in a kappa—the topic of my thesis gradually widened. While it began with a more explicit focus on math anxiety, it developed into a broader exploration of children’s affective relations to mathematics.

The relevance of this work stems from indications in prior research that affective relations to mathematics begin forming early in life, combined with the fact that empirical work with teachers and early childhood populations is still limited and often conflicting. For instance, there is considerable overlap in how terms such as attitudes, emotions, and feelings are defined and used across studies. My thesis, like any scientific contribution, is not decisive in resolving these issues, but it does contribute to the discussion through an interdisciplinary and multimethod approach.

What do you think are the most important conclusions that you have reached in your thesis?

There are several levels of contribution in my thesis. On a theoretical level, it challenges the field of mathematics education to engage with newer perspectives from cognitive-affective neuroscience and their implications. This includes questions about what emotions are, how the socio-historical environments in which we grow up shape our understanding of both emotions and mathematics, and how affectivity may gradually develop into more concrete and identifiable emotion concepts as our language skills expand.

More broadly, my thesis shows that young children’s affective relations to mathematics can be understood as emerging through everyday interactions with teachers, activities, and learning environments. Across three studies, I demonstrate that preschool teachers’ own emotional orientations toward mathematics shape how often and in what ways mathematical ideas become part of children’s daily experiences. I also show that children’s early physiological engagement with math-related tasks appears to be driven more by the demands of the task itself than by pre-existing anxiety.

By closely analysing video-recorded classroom interactions, I further show how teachers’ moment-to-moment responses to children’s affective cues can upgrade, downgrade, or delay responses to children’s affective displays. In turn, this contributes to expanding or delimiting opportunities for mathematical engagement.

Taken together, these findings support a more relational and situated understanding of affect in early mathematics education. They highlight the importance of viewing emotions not simply as something children or teachers “bring with them,” but as processes that are co-constructed through embodied interaction. In this sense, affective responsiveness becomes a central—yet often overshadowed—aspect of mathematics didactics.

My work also introduces new methodological tools and validated measures adapted to the Swedish preschool context, offering practical insights for teacher education and for the design of supportive, low-threat mathematical learning environments.

Are there any specific challenges involved in having children as research participants?

Absolutely. My most immediate thought relates to obtaining consent from children’s legal guardians for them to participate in a research project, but also to the ongoing negotiation of consent with the children themselves.

At the same time, working with children is exciting, interesting, and in many fantastic ways unpredictable. I have always enjoyed working with and learning from them, so having them as participants in my PhD work has served as both inspiration and motivation.

Why did you choose to attend PhD studies in Sweden and Uppsala University?

Sweden offers conditions for doctoral students that are difficult to match when one looks at the competitive international higher education landscape. More specifically, I am referring to the working conditions and benefits that doctoral students receive as employees of the university system.

Uppsala University also covers a very broad range of disciplines. Blåsenhus, for example, is shared by the Department of Education and the Department of Psychology. Before moving here, this gave me the impression that collaborations between the two sides of the building must have produced a long history of joint research. After arriving, I realised that the reality is more complex—and that this history is still in the making.

During the past five years I have crossed the “UFO bridge” countless times trying to help strengthen that cooperation. I have regularly reached out to researchers from both departments and joined several of their research groups. I am very grateful for the academic freedom, technical and financial support, and the human resources that I gained access to from the first day of my employment.

Personally, I do not regret my decision to pursue my PhD here. At the same time, I have become increasingly concerned about the ongoing changes to migration law, which mean that I remain on a temporary residence permit even after more than five years of re-building my life in Sweden.

What are you going to do after you have completed your dissertation?

Throughout my years in Uppsala, the Child and Babylab group within the Division of Developmental Psychology has been an important contributor to and promoter of my work. I therefore applied for a one-year postdoctoral position within this research group and was selected for the role.

In the coming months I will begin writing up data collected through a collaboration established in Paraguay, my home country. This project focuses on the visual form perception of babies aged 8 to 10 months. Using eye-tracking technology and standardized questionnaires, we gather information about the babies’ visual processing as well as their families and their motor development.

In addition, I will soon begin writing about data connected to an intervention developed and implemented by another colleague in the lab. Alongside this, I will be preparing my own grant applications and reaching out to the many contacts I have built throughout my PhD in order to develop shared ideas into feasible research projects.

In parallel with my research, I will also continue teaching within the preschool teacher education programme and in courses offered at the Department of Psychology.

Erik Åstrand