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An Investigation of the Mathematical Knowledge and Competencies which Young Children Bring into School
Author(s) -
Aubrey Carol
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1080/0141192930190103
Subject(s) - curriculum , class (philosophy) , mathematics education , context (archaeology) , representation (politics) , knowledge level , psychology , pedagogy , computer science , artificial intelligence , political science , paleontology , politics , law , biology
This paper describes an investigation of the mathematical knowledge, strategies and representations of one small reception class of 16 children. The data suggest that children bring into school a range of competencies which pose some challenge to the conventional reception class curriculum. Further examination of children's strategies suggests that, as in language acquisition, a rule‐governed approach is operating from the start. The necessity to provide for children to move gradually through different stages of mathematical representation, where they can learn the interrelationships among ideas and link these to their own informal knowledge and strategies, is considered in the context of the National Curriculum.