Expresses concern over the current mathematics education of students and discusses mathematics as a language, including: reading critically, mathematical metaphors, mathematical literature, the nature of knowledge, and how one becomes mathematically literate. (MKR)

Describes the Workplace Literacy Project which teaches mathematics to remedial and special education secondary students through a combination of conceptual approaches and problem-solving exercises anchored in the students' world. The approach also incorporates the use of calculators and computer software such as spreadsheets. (DB)

Explores relative developmental influences of age, number-sense, and context on primary school children's ability to estimate measures. Finds that, although number-sense improved with age, estimation did not; ability to perceive number relations influenced ability to estimate area; and estimation was more accurate in textbook exercises than in a…

Compared arithmetic knowledge and calculation strategies of children in England and Slovenia in relation to existing policy and practice regarding school entry age. Found that English children scored significantly higher than Slovenes at age 6 on basic arithmetic; by 7 there were no differences. English 6 and 7-year-olds scored higher on…

Two experiments examined the development of children's understanding of part-whole relations. Found that five- and six-year olds evidenced understanding of part-whole relations, but four-year olds did not. Results support the conclusion that an understanding of the relationship between a superordinate set and the basic-level sets that comprise it…

Discusses the role of parents in fostering numeracy in their preschool children. Considers the importance of numeracy and includes suggestions for promoting numeracy among children ages 3-4 and 5-6 years. (JPB)

A study sought to ascertain the "official" conception of numeracy in Scotland as published in Her Majesty's Inspectorate (HMI) audit reports. 300 HMI reports on 300 primary schools were examined for references to computational proficiency and understanding of number. Segments signifying proficiency were significantly more numerous than…

Two groups of Chinese four-year-olds and their parents' interaction in joint activities were analyzed and compared. The children in Group 1 were high scorers in written number skills and the children in Group 2 were low scorers. Eighty-five dyads participated in four separate 15-minute joint activities such as book reading, mathematical work…

The article focuses on Fraser Institute's (Vancouver, British Columbia) "Report Card on Elementary Schools in British Columbia." The rating of a school is based on reading, writing, and numeracy levels for both Grade 4 and Grade 7 students, gender differences in reading and numeracy in Grade 7, and the percentage of students not meeting…

Young children's number sense is essential for the acquisition of higher number skills in later years. Most recent studies focus on children over 6 years of age only. To extend the scope, this study dealt with the performance of children aged 4-7 years in 3 cities: Singapore, Beijing and Helsinki (This study is an extension of the research of…

According to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000), children need to learn how to create and use mathematical diagrams to represent and reason about phenomena in the world. The author proposes a model of diagram literacy that includes six types of knowledge required for diagrammatic competence--implicit, construction, similarity,…

Too little theory and research has considered the effects of communicating statistics in various forms on comprehension, perceptions of evidence quality, or evaluations of message persuasiveness. In a considered extension of Subjective Message Construct Theory (Morley, 1987), we advance a rationale relating evidence form to the formation of…

The goal of this paper is to examine efforts to understand the developmental consequences, particularly the cognitive consequences, of children spending large amounts of time in formal schools where their activity is separated from the daily life of the rest of the community and mediated by technologies of literacy and numeracy as well as…

The ingredients that underpin economic growth are well-known and generally accepted; population growth, physical capital, financial capital and human capital all play a part in creating long term differences in the wealth of nations. There remains, however, considerable debate about the ideal recipe for economic growth. Recently, Statistics Canada…

This paper reports on the use of a profiling instrument to evaluate an in-service professional development program for teachers of middle school numeracy. Two aspects of the use of the profile are reported. One relates to the aims of the profile to reflect Lee Shulman?s seven types of teacher knowledge and to measure change in teachers with…