Numeracy in the early years: Project Good Start

KEY FINDINGS

The children in the study continually surprised both the researchers and their own teachers with their knowledge of numeracy and what they could do.

Effective teachers of numeracy in the year before school:

• have high expectations, clear goals, an interest in numeracy and an ability to embed numeracy concepts in materials and communicate these effectively and engage children;
• have an awareness of the need for direct, formal development of numeracy concepts and a pedagogical focus on numeracy as a separate area of the programme; and
• regularly assess student abilities and progress and tailoring of appropriate learning experiences.

Effective teachers of numeracy in the first year of school:

• have a thorough understanding of the whole school numeracy plan and the practical ways of implementing it;
• regularly participate in regular planning, often in teams which are linked to curriculum learning outcomes; and
• have a thorough understanding and regular use of a variety of assessment techniques (formative and summative) to measure student progress which inform their practice and can be reported to parents.

There are some critical teacher, curriculum, and transition needs to be addressed to improve numeracy teaching and learning –

• Access to good quality numeracy professional development – 43% of early years teachers reported not having access to good quality numeracy professional development over the past two years.
• State numeracy curriculum frameworks lack sufficient detail or activities for teachers who have little experience or confidence teaching numeracy.
• Transition to the first year of school could be enhanced by pre-school teachers’ knowledge and information about student’s being passed on to school teachers in an agreed form.
  
  

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