Early numeracy performance of South African school beginners

South African Journal of Childhood Education

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Early numeracy performance of South African school beginners
 
Creator Aunio, Pirjo Mononen, Riikka Ragpot, Lara Törmänen, Minna
 
Subject education; special education; early childhood education assessment; early numeracy; language of instruction; low performance; mathematical learning difficulties -
Description Early numeracy skills are highly relevant for children’s mathematics learning at school, especially in the initial years when much mathematics learning relies on early numeracy competence. The aim of this study was to investigate the level of early numeracy skills in a sample of South African children in the first months of formal schooling. In this cross- sectional study, there were 443 first graders (206 girls and 237 boys) from Gauteng Province schools. The mean age of the children was 81.61 months (6 years 10 months) (SD 5.40 months). Their early numeracy skills were measured with the ThinkMath Scale. The main finding of this study was that there were statistically significant differences in early numeracy skills between the children when they started first grade. The differences were related to the home language of the first graders in the English medium schools, as well as the type of school (public vs. private). This article concludes that the numeracy competence of the children from the sample was notably varied in the beginning of their formal schooling, which has implications for teaching in the vastly different classroom populations that are all served by one national curriculum.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor -
Date 2016-12-15
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — -
Format text/html application/epub+zip application/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/sajce.v6i1.496
 
Source South African Journal of Childhood Education; Vol 6, No 1 (2016); 8 pages 2223-7682 2223-7674
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://sajce.co.za/index.php/sajce/article/view/496/442 https://sajce.co.za/index.php/sajce/article/view/496/441 https://sajce.co.za/index.php/sajce/article/view/496/443 https://sajce.co.za/index.php/sajce/article/view/496/438
 
Coverage - - first graders; children in South Africa
Rights Copyright (c) 2016 Pirjo Aunio, Riikka Mononen, Lara Ragpot, Minna Törmänen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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