A home school project was adapted from Crews' picture book Ten Black Dots. Students in four first grade classes engaged in diverse numeracy encounters in child-family interactive math learning exercises using children's literature bags. The planned activities met the K-4 Curriculum and Evaluation Standards of the National Council of Teachers of…

Reviews educational trends in the United Kingdom concerning parents' involvement in their children's education, and examines families as a context for development. Lists functions parents perform for their children and explains several parenting styles. Discusses parents as educators in three particular areas: (1) numeracy and mathematics; (2)…

Studied number use in language by preschool children and their mothers during cooking experiences. Found that although children used a variety of number words, mothers made greater use of number words than did children. Strong relationship between reciprocal numeracy episodes (between mother and child) and child's number use suggests that adult…

Explores what an emphasis on reading as social practice can tell us about the nature of reading. The article maintains that what counts as a "proper" reading of the text is highly constrained by the classroom context and that classrooms should be discourse sites where specific ways of reading are required and particular regimes of…

Extended matching sets questions (EMSQs) are a form of multiple-choice question (MCQ) consisting of a stem (the question or scenario) with an extended number of possible answers. Although there is no consensus on their absolute format, for the purpose of this paper a multiple-choice question with ten or more alternative answers is considered to be…

Funded by the Learning and Skills Council and the European Social Fund, the North East Worcestershire (NEW) Women project, based at the Multi-Resource Centre in Bromsgrove, offers family learning--in its broadest sense--for young mothers. It has in place all the requirements of good practice for providing learning opportunities to young mothers,…

Number sense is easy to recognize but difficult to define and hence, to teach. In this article, number sense is defined in terms of the knowledge known to underline it, as identified in cognitive developmental theory and research. A preK-2 mathematics program, called Number Worlds, that was specifically developed to teach this knowledge is…

This paper concerns the relationship between learning English as an additional language (EAL) and school mathematics. In bilingual education, Cummins has proposed a distinction between coercive and collaborative power-relations as an important consideration in the education of such students, advocating collaboration as a means to empower such…

As children make the transition to school, many things may change for them. Among these are the ways they interact with curriculum areas such as mathematics. This paper explores some of these changes by considering examples of children's mathematical experiences in prior-to-school and school settings and analysing them in terms of the mathematical…

This paper discusses some results of South African (SA) grade 12 pupils on an international test of mathematical literacy, administered in the framework of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) under the auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Three questions are…

The "TIMSS 2011 International Results in Mathematics" summarizes fourth and eighth grade student achievement in each of the 63 countries and 14 benchmarking entities which participated in TIMSS 2011. The report includes trends in mathematics achievement over time for participants in the previous TIMSS 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007…

This paper reports the findings of an Australia-wide survey conducted as part of a national teacher education research project that explored the preparation of teachers to teach literacy and numeracy in Australian schools (Louden, Rohl, Gore, Greaves, McIntosh, Wright, Siemon & House, 2005). The project included various phases of inquiry,…

Students who successfully complete grade nine are substantially more likely to graduate from high school than are students who fail the freshman year. However, many middle grades students are not academically prepared for ninth grade. This report addresses five questions that can help school leaders ensure that middle grades students know the…

This report identifies 13 instructional strategies for teaching adult numeracy skills that address issues of assessment, development of mathematical skills, and development of problem-solving skills. The rationale and suggestions regarding the following 13 instructional principles are described: address and evaluate attitudes and beliefs about…

The Kentucky Adult Literacy Survey, which was based on the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), was conducted to determine the prose, document, and quantitative literacy levels of the state's adult population. Trained interviewers conducted hour-long interviews with 1,492 Kentucky citizens between the ages of 16 and 65 who had been selected…