Cultural Rules and Meanings of Numerals

Funded by the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2019-330), this project explored longitudinal changes in preschool children’s conceptions of the cultural rules and uses of written numerals in everyday environments and contexts, alongside the development of their own production of written numerals. The findings aim to help educators connect the cultural knowledge of number that children bring to school, with classroom-based mathematics approaches and practices.

Part 1 examined preschool children’s conceptions of the multiple meanings and social uses of numerals in everyday life.

Part 2 examined the written notations that children produce to communicate the ordinal position of an object in a sequence and the quantity of cards won in a game, as well as children’s production of written numbers with a labelling/identifier function.