Discusses mathematical literacy and basic skills. Includes a take-home page. (YDS)

The case of a group of women who financed and purchased a vacation house is used to explore numeracy practices, self-concept, and feelings about money management. Gendered practices in their family backgrounds were more influential than school math instruction in their financial management as adults. (SK)

Discusses the view of numeracy as the culture of utility in mathematics education in more technological society. Provides examples from different cultures of the workplace and computer uses in mathematics classrooms. Contains 30 references. (ASK)

Describes a lunchtime math club that was a pivotal aspect of a whole school initiative to raise achievement in basic skills in a British girls' school. Discusses student recruitment, types of games played, links to the British national curriculum, and staffing implications. (JOW)

Numeracy may become a focus on the teaching and assessment of basic number skills. Such a focus on numeracy may de-emphasize the aim for numeracy, which is using mathematics in real contexts where the purpose of the activity is something other than just learning school mathematics. (Contains 11 references.) (ASK)

Discusses the changing perceptions of numeracy in a changing world, and puts forward arguments for integrating calculator use into the earliest school years. (Author/ASK)

In an interview setting, 21 6th-graders from four public schools in south Taiwan were asked a series of questions, related to whole and decimal numbers, designed to assess their number sense. Eight students were randomly selected from both low and middle performance levels, and five were selected from a high-performance level, according to their…

This paper reports a systematic review of the quasi-experimental literature in the field of adult literacy and numeracy, published between 1980 and 2002. We included 27 controlled trials (CTs) that evaluated strategies and pedagogies designed to increase adult literacy and numeracy: 18 CTs with no effect sizes (incomplete data) and 9 CTs with full…

Two studies were conducted to investigate, firstly, children's focusing on the aspect of numerosity in utilizing enumeration in action, and, secondly, whether children's Spontaneous Focusing on Numerosity (SFON) is related to their counting development. The longitudinal data of 39 children from the age of 3.5 to 6 years showed individual…

This paper examines what children believe about unmapped number words--those number words whose exact meanings children have not yet learned. In Study one, 31 children (ages 2-10 to 4-2) judged that the application of "five" and "six" changes when numerosity changes, although they did not know that equal sets must have the same number word. In…

In a recent edition of "Mathematics Teaching" Midge Pasternack argued the case for the use of the 0-99 square with young children rather than the ubiquitous 1-100 square. In this article, the author would like to take the opportunity to mount a defence in favour of the much maligned 1-100 square. His main criticism of the 0-99 square (apart from…

This article describes the pivotal roles that Marin Mersenne played--as a recreational mathematician in search of prime number patterns and as a mentor to young mathematicians and scientists. His work is used as an example for today's mathematics teachers in encouraging students to work together and creating environments that foster success for…

"Classroom Management Strategies to Address the Needs of Sudanese Refugee Learners" (ED499673) examined the extent to which English language, literacy and numeracy teachers used classroom management strategies to meet the needs of adult Sudanese refugee learners. The researchers found that while teachers met the needs of these learners…

Financial literacy refers to the ability to make informed judgements and to take effective decisions regarding the use and management of money. A baseline survey carried out by the Financial Services Agency (FSA) in 2006 highlighted many issues: (1) 29% of 16-4-year-olds said they would not know how to prepare and manage a weekly budget; (2) 19%…

This opening article of the Special Issue makes an argument for parallel definitions of scientific literacy and mathematical literacy that have shared features: importance of general cognitive and metacognitive abilities and reasoning/thinking and discipline-specific language, habits-of-mind/emotional dispositions, and information communication…