Children\'s Mathematics

and school settings. She asserts that ‘for many, the discontinuities are on children

learning to be readers, writers and mathematicians’ (Anning, 2000, p. 22). It appears

that of all the curriculum areas, mathematics – especially the ways in which young

children represent mathematics – is where the greatest discontinuity exists.

Table 2.2Beliefs about young children’s ability to represent mathematics

BBeehhaavviioouurriissmm • Children cannot represent mathematics unless they are shown what to do and

how to do it

• Children can only learn by direct teaching (transmission)


• Children need to copy what the teacher does and learn through skills taught in
  isolation


• Praise for right answers reinforces ‘good work’


• Children must have a lot of repetition and practice of written mathematics


• Children should work independently
  CCoonnssttrruuccttiivviissmm • Children can only understand certain aspects of mathematics at each stage of
  their development


• Young children need a lot of groundwork (‘pre-number’ work) before they are
  ready to work with numbers
  SSoocciiaall ccoonnssttrruuccttiivviissmm • Children can use and ‘construct’ their own meanings


• Through interaction with an adult or more knowledgeable children, can achieve
  what they are unable to do on their own


• Children use a range of marks to represent their mathematical thinking


• Children’s partial knowledge and ‘errors’ are recognised as part of children’s
  search for meaning and understanding


• Children’s development of their mathematical graphics is similar in some
  respects to their emergent writing (see Chapters 4 and 5)


• Children’s emerging understanding of symbolic and graphical languages such as
  emergent writing, mathematical graphics and drawing is understood and
  supported
  SSoocciioo--ccuullttuurraalliissmm Implications for children’s developing understanding of mathematics


• Children learn symbols and mathematics through their social and cultural
  contexts of home, their community and their Early Years settings and school


• Early Childhood settings create cultures of practice that can support children’s
  mathematical understanding in positive ways


• Children develop confidence and understanding when they are encouraged to
  build on their informal ‘home’ mathematical representation and gradually
  integrate standard, abstract forms of mathematical symbols, calculations and
  other aspects of ‘written’ mathematics


• Young children are powerful learners who can use their own ideas, take risks,
  adapt, invent, construct personal meanings, negotiate and enquire


• Young children have an amazing capacity to make sense of (abstract) symbolic
  languages such as writing and mathematics

The model in Table 2.2 demonstrates the gulf that may exist between the home

and Early Years settings in terms of beliefs, values and practices about early literacies,

including mathematics.

The challenge for Early Years educators is to value and build on every one of the

child’s ‘hundred languages’ in ways which make sense to the child and connect with

their early experiences within their homes and cultures. The challenge is to help

children ‘translate’ between informal ways of representing mathematics in the home

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