Pretend play is often hypothesized in a global sense to be an effective context for young children's learning, but there is much still to learn about whether all types of information can be learned equally and whether all types of pretend play are equally beneficial. The present study tests whether preschoolers can learn a simple, novel causal…

For Freudenthal, the practice of mathematics in the curriculum is not a set of predetermined theories, goals and means. On the contrary, it is always associated with positively understood phenomenological processes in mathematics, as the curriculum is often used in conjunction with the transformation or development of practice. For Freudenthal…

There is growing interest in mathematics learning progressions in early childhood education. Counting is a skill usually developed early in life. The application of the counting principles in early childhood typically entails counting objects. This poses challenges for learning about zero. Indeed, the word "zero" is seldom used in the…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to analyse the level of knowledge about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of pre-service teachers in Early Childhood and Primary School Education at the University of Valencia (Spain) and the origin of this knowledge over several academic years, as well as to compare it with that of students of the…

Students' ability to operate with increasingly more complex units has been shown to be a key factor in their conceptual development. These abilities have been characterized as "stages of units coordination." This article focuses on the domain of composing and decomposing composite units. Using data from a teaching experiment with a…

Young children's meaning-focused skills are foundational for reading comprehension and begin to develop prior to formal reading instruction. In this article, we argue for the importance of supporting meaning-focused skills in early childhood classrooms. We describe authentic, real-life examples of engaging preschool children in activities that…

The current quantitative study, a naturalistic field experiment, was conducted in a public primary school in Soweto, Johannesburg, with the objective to examine how children's achievement on four assessments at the beginning of Grade R, namely their numeracy, their mathematics-specific vocabulary, their executive functions, and their logical…

Students' understanding of the meaning of the equal sign develops slowly over the primary grades. In addition to updating their representations of equations to recognize that the equal sign represents an equivalence relation rather than signaling an operation, students need to move beyond full computation to efficiently solve equivalence problems.…

Place value concepts were measured longitudinally from kindergarten (2017) to first grade (2018) in a diverse sample (n = 279; M[subscript age] = 5.76 years, SD = 0.55; 135 females; 41% Black, 38% White, 8% Asian, 12% Latino). Children completed three syntactic tasks that required an explicit understanding of base-10 symbols and three approximate…

This study explored the mathematical beliefs of two second-grade teachers. This exploration included 1) the nature of mathematics beliefs and orientation towards teaching and learning held by the teachers, 2) how their beliefs were developed and, when applicable, changed, and 3) how their beliefs influenced their mathematics instruction. It used…

Disasters continue to have adverse effects around the globe leaving many lives susceptible to hazards and fatalities most especially children. The Philippines, known to be one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, experiences earthquakes, typhoons, and flooding yearly. For the reason of the country's vulnerability to disasters, it is…

Much attention has been paid to storybook reading as a context for supporting preschoolers' emergent language and literacy. Inferential thinking is essential to listening comprehension and to reading comprehension. Understanding the story deeply and reasoning about events and characters are central to children's enjoyment and to comprehension…

After situating the figuration of the postdevelopmental child in the context of hegemonic colonising developmental discourses about child rearing and education, I engage with posthumanist perspectives that rupture the binaries, power relations and age discrimination these discourses assume. Developmentalism raises concerns about how child as…

Parent involvement has been shown to have a positive effect on second language acquisition, student motivation and academic achievement. This is particularly true for the almost five million English learners (ELs) in our PK-12 schools today and has important implications for the preparation of pre-service teachers. This study investigated how a…

Difficulties in understanding evolution are often rooted in early childhood, arising from naïve assumptions and cognitive biases. However, literature reviews mainly focus on school and university students' understanding of evolution, with only limited comprehensive reviews on children in early childhood aged up to 7 years. This systematic review…