Narrative and Mathematics: A Dialogic Analysis of Children's Stories in the Understanding of Classification, Serialization and Comparison

Abstract

The study analysed the role of children's stories as cognitive mediators in the construction of logical thinking in early education. It was based on the premise that stories, by integrating language, emotion and experience, enable symbolic understanding and the organisation of reasoning. This research responded to the need to establish a theoretical framework that links children's literature with early mathematical learning processes. The objective was to identify how children's narratives affect the development of classification, seriation and comparison skills in early childhood, interpreting the results from a hermeneutic and bibliometric approach. The study was developed with a qualitative approach, using a documentary and interpretative design. A total of 392 articles indexed in Scopus were analysed using VOSviewer, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 teachers from the National University of Education (UNAE). The data were triangulated in Atlas.ti version 25 software, generating three emerging categories: narrative mediation, cognitive interaction and discursive comprehension. The findings showed that narrative acted as symbolic mediation between experience and abstraction. The sequences of the story promoted attention, memory, and inductive reasoning. The teaching discourse, by guiding the interpretation of the stories, consolidated the understanding of basic mathematical concepts within a linguistic and cultural framework. Children's narrative was consolidated as an epistemic system that unites cognition, discourse and culture. The story not only stimulates the imagination, but also organizes the logic of children's thinking, demonstrating its effectiveness as a pedagogical tool in early education.