This book challenges traditional beliefs and practices of teaching 'written' mathematics in early childhood. It gives theoretical underpinnings and offers exciting insights and context to children's early mathematical thinking and in particular into children's mathematical graphics, showing how this supports their understanding of the abstract symbolic language of mathematics. Drawing on a wide range of examples, it illustrates and explains how children explore and communicate their mathematical thinking through their mathematical graphics, and how this begins in play.The book looks at the power of children's own marks, symbols and other graphical representations to convey meanings, exploring how they support complex thinking. The authors explore the relationship between children's play and meaning making. Rather than viewing mathematics as a separate subject or as a set of basic 'skills' to be transmitted, they demonstrate that in supportive learning cultures children develop their own mathematical thinking to solve problems.Key features include:
This is Book 7 in the UK Higher Education Oup Humanities & Social Sciences Education Oup Series. See all UK Higher Education Oup Humanities & Social Sciences Education Oup books here.
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Elizabeth Carruthers is Head Teacher of Redcliffe Nursery School, Children's Centre and National Teaching School, Bristol, UK. She is a National Leader of Education, an education writer and author of several best-selling books. In 2014, she received the `Local Food Hero Award' at the BBC Food and Farming Awards.
Carole Keane is an Assistant Head at Red
Elizabeth Carruthers and Maulfry Worthington are founders of the International Children's Mathematics Network, established in 2003. They have both taught in the full 3 - 8 year age range for over 26 years and have carried out extensive research in key aspects of early mathematics, with a particular focus on the development and pedagogy of children's early wr
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