An analysis of cross-task and within-task variations of preschool children’s written number notations over time Seminar

We examined preschool children’s notations within four tasks that varied in their context and focus: Two tasks prompted children to produce a written record for communicating the ordinal position of an object in a sequence and the points won in a game, respectively. Two further tasks prompted children to produce written numbers as labels.

Over three cycles of data collection, the results show rich variation in the choices that children make for written notations that communicate different concepts (cross-task variation), as well as at different instances in the same task (within-task variation). The findings depict the complexity of individual notational production. We will also discuss implications for task design in early mathematics development research.

Speaker information

Dr Charis Voutsina and Dr Debbie Stott, Southampton Education School.