Children’s notations for representing quantity and ordinal position
Children’s notations for representing quantity and ordinal position
We present findings from a longitudinal study that examined the notations that 3-5-year-old children produced to communicate the ordinal position of an object in a sequence and quantity. 33 preschool children participated in three individual, task-based interviews, over one year. Children’s individual notational pathways varied over one year and did not always portray gradual moves towards conventional notations. The frequency of conventional numeral use in the quantity task was almost double the frequency of conventional numerals used in the ordinal task. Qualitative data show that notational choices can be influenced by various factors, including children’s awareness of their own numeral knowledge constraints, and do not necessarily reflect limited awareness of the affordances of numerals as communicative-referential symbols. The findings can inform early mathematics pedagogy that can best support connections between children’s informal knowledge about written numbers and formal learning at school.
Voutsina, Chronoula
bd9934e7-f8e0-4b82-a664-a1fe48850082
Stott, Deborah A
b0aa8219-0350-4fdb-9102-61ce78e78400
2 November 2024
Voutsina, Chronoula
bd9934e7-f8e0-4b82-a664-a1fe48850082
Stott, Deborah A
b0aa8219-0350-4fdb-9102-61ce78e78400
Voutsina, Chronoula and Stott, Deborah A
(2024)
Children’s notations for representing quantity and ordinal position.
Conference of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics, University of Southampton, Southampton.
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Abstract
We present findings from a longitudinal study that examined the notations that 3-5-year-old children produced to communicate the ordinal position of an object in a sequence and quantity. 33 preschool children participated in three individual, task-based interviews, over one year. Children’s individual notational pathways varied over one year and did not always portray gradual moves towards conventional notations. The frequency of conventional numeral use in the quantity task was almost double the frequency of conventional numerals used in the ordinal task. Qualitative data show that notational choices can be influenced by various factors, including children’s awareness of their own numeral knowledge constraints, and do not necessarily reflect limited awareness of the affordances of numerals as communicative-referential symbols. The findings can inform early mathematics pedagogy that can best support connections between children’s informal knowledge about written numbers and formal learning at school.
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Published date: 2 November 2024
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Conference of the British Society for Research into Learning Mathematics, University of Southampton, Southampton, 2024-11-02
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Local EPrints ID: 508488
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/508488
PURE UUID: 4584c606-9779-41ec-aee9-8a5d8ca3392e
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Date deposited: 23 Jan 2026 17:39
Last modified: 24 Jan 2026 02:45
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