An Investigation of the Mathematical Knowledge and Competencies which Young Children Bring into School

Abstract

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.