early ‘written’ mathematics is considerably behind our understanding of children’s
early writing development. However, if one could claim there is a similar pattern of
development between literacy learning and mathematical learning, then there could
be a strong argument to suggest that we teach both subjects in similar ways.Early (emergent) literacy is often misunderstood
Whatever teaching approach is used in education, there are dangers of poor teaching
or the concept being misunderstood. For example, Munn (1997) explains emergent lit-
eracy in terms of an ‘emergent literacy scheme’ and ‘pre-literate children’. These terms
are questioned in texts on emergent literacy (see for example Hall, 1987). Munn also
talks about communication as the overriding factor in emergent literacy. In her analy-
sis of her research findings, she concludes that ‘there can be little similarity between
the development of children’s understanding of numerals and their understanding of
writing’ (Munn, 1997, p. 95). Her research findings stated that children cannot com-
municate their own pictographic and tally marks in numeracy because they cannot
read them back.. However, there is also a stage in emergent writing when children
cannot communicate their marks to others but they do know that they have meaning,
as when a child says ‘I am doing writing’ (for example see Hughes, 1986, p. 57). In
Mills’s experience of children’s literacy she describes an incident where several days
later a child read her same piece of writing and had completely changed the meaning.
Mills’s salient questions help us think through the dilemmas:- ‘Can you pinpoint the exact moment a child attributes a sound value to a letter or
transfers from syllabic to alphabetic recording?’ - ‘Is it really necessary for every child to read back their early attempts at their own
invented numerical recordings several days after writing them?’ (Mills, 2002, p. 9)
In our experience there is no definite line where a child moves from one kind of under-
standing to another. The overriding point is that they do have an understanding on
which they build and develop. An emergent approach to mathematics has no easy
clear-cut pedagogy and may challenge teachers. However, in reply to Munn’s doubts
about such an approach Mills asks: ‘Is the ambiguity over the point of understanding
enough to discount an emergent approach to numeracy?’ (Mills, 2002, p. 59).
In our study we have found that children use a variety of non-conventional marks
in different ways to communicate their mathematics. It is, we believe, because they
have chosen to do it and it makes sense to them. Our findings are different to those
of Munn because, instead of the clinical interview model of research, we used situa-
tions that were based on everyday conditions in real classrooms and in the home.
Bruce (1991) describes this as ‘real data’.Teachers’ perceptions of early writing
In our telephone interviews with teachers, one of the questions we asked was whether
teachers supported emergent writing. We believe that if teachers already have devel-66 Children’s Mathematics8657part 1b.qxd 04/07/2006 18:10 Page 66