A longitudinal study to explore pre-school children’s understanding of the cultural rules and meanings of written numerals in their everyday environments.

February 2021 – March 2023

Brief

Funded by the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2019-330), this project has explored longitudinal changes in preschool children’s conceptions of the cultural rules and uses of written numerals in everyday environments and contexts, alongside the development of their own production of written numerals. The findings aim to help educators connect the cultural knowledge of number that children bring to school, with classroom-based mathematics approaches and practices.

Structure

This project included two parts.

Part 1

We examined preschool children’s conceptions of the multiple meanings and social uses of numerals in everyday life.

Part 2

We examined the written notations that children produce to communicate the ordinal position of an object in a sequence and the quantity of cards won in a game. We also examined children’s production of written numbers with a labelling/identifier function.