Dr Maulfry Worthington     

 - lives in Devon, in England, and was awarded her PhD in 2021 from the 

Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, focusing on the 'emergence and development of young children's personal mathematical inscriptions', explored through their spontaneous pretend play. She was fortunate to have Bert van Oers & Marjolein Dobber as her doctoral supervisors.

    Maulfry has researched young children's mathematics, pretend play and semiotics since the early 1990s, individually and in collaboration with Elizabeth Carruthers. She taught for 30 years in the 4-7 year age range (including special education) in London, Surrey and Devon, and was a National Numeracy Consultant and an early years mathematics consultant in Dorset. Maulfry has lectured in early childhood education and on primary and early years mathematics at B.Ed, PGCE and Master's level courses, and was an e-learning facilitator, managing early years' online communities at the National College for School Leadership. She has led numerous professional development courses for teachers and practitioners in many aspects of early childhood education and especially mathematics, and has published extensively on play and children's mathematical graphics.

Research Interests include: 

Socio-culturalism; social semiotics; Vygotsky; cultural evolution; ethnography; funds of knowledge; the genesis of graphical languages (drawing, early maps, emergent writing and Children's Mathematical Graphics); emergent learning; early childhood mathematics; children's social literacies; multimodality; language acquisition; early childhood mathematics and pretend play and imagination (in no particular order)!

Affiliations:

• Member of the Association for Professional Development in Early Years (TACTYC) 
• Member of the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA)
• Member of the European Early Childhood Education Research Association  'Rethinking Play' SIG
• Co-convenor of Mathematics Birth to Eight SIG, (EECERA)
• Member of British Educational Research Association (BERA). 
• Member of Early Education.
• Co-founder (with Elizabeth Carruthers) of Children's Mathematics Network (2003): this version of the website launched 22nd June 2023.