Recommendation 1: Develop educators’ understanding of how children learn mathematics
Recommendation 2: Dedicate time for children to learn mathematics and integrate mathematics throughout the day
Recommendation 3: Use manipulatives and representations to develop understanding
Recommendation 4: Ensure that teaching builds on what children already know
Recommendation 5: Use high quality targeted support to help all children learn mathematics
Evidence for Learning has produced another Guidance Report, Putting Evidence to Work: A School’s Guide to Implementation which can be used as a guide as you plan to implement changes in your school setting relating to improving mathematics. Based on the evidence and general principles from implementation science, this Guidance Report may also be useful for those implementing changes in early learning settings to improve mathematics.
Implementation can be described as a series of stages relating to thinking about, preparing for, delivering, and sustaining change. The section ‘Acting on the guide’ in the ‘Improving mathematics in the early years with children aged 3 – 7 years’ Guidance Report, suggests a range of strategies that you might find helpful in planning, structuring and delivering a whole‑setting/school approach to mathematics.
E4L thanks the Australian researchers and educators who provided input to and feedback on drafts of this Guidance Report.
We acknowledge the particular insights from Professor Marina Papic (Australian Catholic University), James Ellis (Lead Teacher – Birth to Year 6 setting, South Australia), Dr Leigh Disney (Monash University), and Dr Liang Li (Monash University). We also thank the leaders and educators who contributed illustrations of practice on how to put the evidence into action.
This Guidance Report and supporting materials are licensed under a Creative Commons licence as outlined below. Permission may be granted for derivatives, please contact Evidence for Learning for more information.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence.
References
1 Duncan, G., Dowsett, C., Claessens, A., Magnuson, K., Huston, A., Klebanov, P., Pagani, L et al. (2007). School Readiness and Later Achievement. Developmental psychology. 43(6), 1428. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012 – 1…