What Children Can Teach Adults About Mathematics

This book provides insights into the mathematical thinking of children, representing a rare fusion of knowledge obtained from scientific study of children’s mathematics learning, together with informal observations of the author’s grandchildren over the last 7 years. A unique feature of this book is the extensive collection of embedded video examples used to illustrate various aspects of children’s play and mathematical thinking.

 

Over the past 30-40 years, research evidence, together with the author’s experience as a teacher, parent and grandparent, suggests that the ways adults think about mathematics and the ways children think about mathematics are not necessarily the same. Listening, observing, posing problems, and conducting conversations with children are all activities a teacher, parent, or carer must engage in, in order to begin to figure out where children are coming from mathematically. If children’s mathematics encompasses their own meanings and understandings, and those meanings and understandings are different to that of the adult, then to provide effective assistance and support, that adult must make every effort to see mathematics from the child’s perspective.



What Children Can Teach Adults About Mathematics targets the early years because much of the author’s own academic work has been focused on understanding young children’s mathematical thinking.