There has been a lot of debate in media about mathematics teaching in grade school in Sweden. Many students experience that mathematics in grade school is abstract, which leads to decreased interest of mathematics in early years. An international study indicates that Swedish students in class 4 do not fulfill the mean for mathematics according to EU/OECD countries. The study also shows that Sweden practice a textbook driven education, compared to other countries. The aim for this study was to find out how a few pedagogues for class F-6 teach mathematics, and why they have chosen to educate the way they do. It was relevant to investigate if these pedagogues use a laboratory education method in their teaching, and if so, which profits and disadvantages they experience by using this method. I decided to use qualitative interviews, according to an interview guide, which agreed to the aim and the question form of the study. The empiric material that was collected from these interviews were analyzed and discussed with support from theories and earlier research, which I found relevant to this study.

In the theoretical reference frame, I decided to use the most relevant of Piagets, Vygotskijs and Deweys views and thoughts of children’s knowledge, development and learning. The conclusion for this study is that all pedagogues used variation in their operation mode and in their mathematic education, where the textbook and a laboratory education are included.  Their choice of using a certain method is founded on the experience where many students think that mathematics is an abstract subject where all are different and learn mathematics in different ways. The pedagogues say that variation in operation mode where the students can participate in their learning at the same time as the mathematics makes visible, increases the condition for the students to understand mathematics. In the investigation, it was found that some of the pedagogues discovered a big student group alongside with few education hours that are reserved for mathematics, as a difficulty to use a laboratory working method in the spread they would like to.