Recent studies have highlighted the importance of ordinality skills in early numerical development. Here, we investigate individual differences in ordering sets of items and suggest that children might also differ in their tendency to spontaneously recognize and use numerical order in everyday situations. This study investigated the individual…

Mastery of the cardinality principle (CP) is foundational for children's mathematical development. Children's age and subitizing and counting skills contribute to their CP acquisition. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of different types of instruction for supporting 3-4-year-olds' CP development and its interplay with child…

Repeating patterning proficiency predicts students' later mathematical proficiency. A comparative multi-case design enabled the present study to compare patterning success and strategy use for repeating patterns of 75 Norwegian 6-year-old grade 1 students. We provided the students with duplicate, extend, transfer, and unit isolation activities in…

Rational numbers, such as fractions and decimals, are harder to understand than natural numbers. Moreover, individuals struggle with fractions more than with decimals. The present study sought to disentangle the extent to which two potential sources of difficulty affect secondary-school students' numerical magnitude understanding: number type…

This article proposes an in-depth mathematics analysis of simple and compound interest through an exploration of the mathematical structures underlying these concepts. Financial numeracy concepts (simple and compound interest, interest rates, interest period, present and future value, etc.) have been added to the mathematics curriculum of the…

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought increased attention to the critical mathematical literacy of citizens in the United States and around the world. A statistically and mathematically literate society is crucial for ensuring that citizens are able to sift through political rhetoric to maintain life-saving procedures such as social…

Social institutions function not only by reproducing specific practices but also by reproducing discourses endowing such practices with meaning. The latter in turn is related to the development of the identities or subjectivities of those who live and thrive within such institutions. Meaning and subjectivity are therefore significant sociological…

In mathematics education, there is general agreement regarding the significance of mathematical literacy (also quantitative literacy or numeracy) for informed citizenship, which often requires evaluating the use of numbers in public policy discourse. We hold that such an evaluation must accommodate the necessarily fragile relation between the…

In the first months of 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic became a top concern worldwide, media coverage became full of information that demands mathematical literacy, or numeracy, to interpret. In this study, we examine the public's understanding of mathematical notions that are required for understanding the pandemic and predicting its spread. We…

This paper illuminates challenges confronting teachers and students at the literacy/numeracy interface in contexts where students have not developed sufficient English language proficiency to be learning mathematics through English but, due to socio-politically and economically driven perceptions are being taught in English. We analyse transcript…

In this article, I consider the question: why did numeracy become a relevant and sensible thing to consider in mathematics education? I historicize the numeracy discourse by writing a genealogy of how the concept of "numeracy" emerged in scholarship, with a focus on the USA. I argue that numeracy descends from three mathematics education…

Parents are their children's most influential educators, and their joint activities can influence these children's early learning. Past studies with small, non-representative samples do not show a consistent link between early numeracy activities at home and children's mathematics achievement. Specifically, whether or how "early numeracy…

In this 3-year longitudinal study, we examined the interplay of children's motivational orientations, spontaneous focusing on numerosity (SFON) and number sequence and arithmetical skills from kindergarten (at age 6) to grade 1 (at age 7). We also examined the direct and indirect contributions of motivation and SFON to the acquisition of…

Empirical research has documented how children's early counting develops into an increasingly abstract process, and initial counting procedures are reified as children develop and use more sophisticated counting. In this development, the learning of different oral counting sequences that allow children to count in steps bigger than one is seen as…

The reported research attempts to trace possible reasons for third grade learners' limited progress in numeracy in a low socioeconomic status (SES) South African context. This is done through two lenses, both stemming from Sfard's commognitive (The term "commognition" has been offered by Sfard (2008) as an amalgam of…