Numeracy in Early Childhood: Shared Contexts for Teaching and Learning is covers all the topics which are important for those studying to become early childhood practitioners. This Australian text focuses on using everyday language and objects to teach numeracy skills to young children.
This book demonstrates how early childhood practitioners can stimulate and facilitate numeracy education from infancy by listening, observing and responding to the mathematical content in children's everyday life. Detailed observations of real life situations and dialogue assist pre-service teachers to make sense of mathematical meanings and teaching strategies. With reference to the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers' Standards of Excellence, current early education teaching models and planning and assessment practices are examined. Mathematical concepts are simply explained to assist the readers' own conceptual knowledge, so that they can recognize the mathematics and support children in their numeracy development. The underlying theories and current research into children's learning is used to examine children's acquisition of numerate identities.