Background: This article presents the Afrikaans translation of an originally German diagnostic test for early number concept development. The process of ‘importing’ a test to South Africa by considering linguistic-, functional-, cultural and metric equivalence is outlined. A theoretical model describes five levels of young children’s hierarchical number concept development which collectively contribute to early mathematical understanding. The five-level hierarchical structure has previously been confirmed by testing the theoretical model in a one-dimensional Rasch analysis in Germany. Aim: The current study aimed to determine whether the individual items, allocated to test the concepts of each level of the Afrikaans translation of the diagnostic test, confirm the hierarchical structure of the theoretical model. Setting: A Rasch analysis indicated that the model was fit for the Afrikaans translation. A sample of 165 Afrikaans-speaking grade one children was tested in six Afrikaans medium primary schools in Gauteng. Methods: Analysis of fit values, person and item reliability and a person–item map was used as part of a Rasch analysis. Results: The theoretical model of hierarchical number concept development holds for the Afrikaans MARKO-D. Five levels were clearly distinguishable on a Write map and the individual items tested the concepts according to the levels of the theoretical model. Conclusion: The Afrikaans MARKO-D can now successfully be used to describe young Afrikaans children’s number concept development. A five-level theoretical model is a useful tool for teachers using the MARKO-D to assess young children’s numerical competence.

Background: The South African Department of Basic Education (DBE) aims to expand science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning in the national curriculum through a Digital Skills for All Curriculum (DSfAC) for Grade R – 9. The DSfAC intends to educate a STEM-literate future citizenry with refined computational thinking (CT), and coding and robotics skills. As with all learning, foundations are ideally laid when children are young and when they form habits of thinking that can ultimately serve as their first building blocks for successful learning. Current theoretical frameworks describe how teachers can include CT, coding and other STEM related constructs in their teaching. In the curriculum plan, a conceptual framework that underpins the design of teaching materials to support STEM literacy teaching, has, however, not yet been forwarded.Aim: Presenting a conceptual framework that has served as the design heuristic for a dialogue reading programme (DRP) for young children. The programme consists of three picture books, created to develop young children’s digital skills and related vocabulary as outlined in the DSfAC through story texts and pictures.Method: I implemented an iterative participatory approach to develop the conceptual framework.Conclusion: The development of teaching materials, like a DRP, should have its genesis in a confluence of three interdisciplinary components to develop a conceptual framework: (1) scientific research and theories; (2) an iterative participatory approach which involves teachers, parents, children, and other role players in the development process; and (3) systematic utilisation of existing examples of relevant teaching materials.

Background: Early numeracy development is supported by linguistic features such as mathematics-specific vocabulary. Researchers have established a link between the amount and quality of children’s exposure to mathematics-specific vocabulary and their numeracy learning. Studies have also shown that children from low socio-economic status are less exposed to mathematics-specific vocabulary and also tend to underperform on mathematics assessments. South African children consistently perform poorly on local and international mathematics assessments.Aim: To describe associations between numeracy and mathematics-specific vocabulary of the sample who participated in the study.Setting: Participants in this study are from Quintile 1 schools and receive social grants from the South African government.Method: 133 Grade 1 and 2 children completed assessments for (1) early numeracy (MARKO-D SA), (2) mathematics-specific vocabulary (MMLT) and (3) early reading (EGRA). Correlation analyses were conducted to investigate associations between variables and developmental continuity of number concept development and reading skills were described.Results: An association between numeracy and mathematics-specific vocabulary was found. The data confirm that number concepts and reading skills develop hierarchically. Although English-speaking children performed better on the numeracy assessment, isiZulu and Sesotho speakers performed better on the reading test.Conclusion: Mathematics-specific vocabulary is a key tool for early number concept development, also in isiZulu and Sesotho. Teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) should include how number concept development intersects with mathematics-specific vocabulary. Explicit teaching of mathematics-specific vocabulary should be included in the Foundation Phase curriculum.

Introduction: Everyday social interaction as bedrock for early numeracyUpon entering Grade R, children already have substantial knowledge of the natural and the social world, which includes basic numeracy (Carey 2009;Clements & Sarama 2016;Dehaene 2011) and language competence (Dehaene 2009, 2020; Spelke 2017). During young children's daily engagement with their environment and with some formal instruction and free play, a dynamic interplay between conceptual and linguistic development is fostered (Condry & Spelke 2008;Schmitt, Purpura & Elicker 2019). In this article, I discuss theoretical perspectives, coupled with teachers' personal theories of this intersection between pre-schoolers' social environment, their unfolding numeracy and their language development. In addition, I argue that this intersection is cognitively filtered by children's executive functions (EF), and that, collectively, these factors contribute, ultimately, to children's Grade 1 numeracy achievement (Figure 1).Early numeracy skills and language 'for' mathematics have been shown to be related to and predictive of mathematics learning (Aunio et al. 2019;Clements & Sarama 2016;Schmitt et al. 2019). Dyrvold (2020:2), referring to Niss and Højgaard (2011), argues that mathematical proficiency requires 'communicative and reasoning competencies, ones that are language dependent'. She continues, '(a)ccordingly, students must be given opportunities to learn (the) mathematics subject language'.Learning the discourse of mathematics, and in this instance, the discourse of number concepts, is part and parcel of almost all natural languages, with a few exceptions such as reported in a study of Australian indigenous children in which no language effects were found in 3-5-year-old Background: In South Africa, many children learn mathematics in English, which is often not a home language. This type of linguistic situation intersects with their learning environments, their numeracy attainment and their executive functions. Ultimately, these aspects collectively contribute to children's numeracy attainment in Grade 1. Aim:To describe how teachers draw on their views of the intersection of (1) pre-school numeracy competence, (2) language for mathematics and (3) the home and classroom environment, and (4) executive functions as cognitive filter for the teaching of mathematics, specifically of number concepts.Setting: A well-resourced school in a township area of urban Johannesburg, where Grade 1 children are taught in English, although their home language and Grade R language of instruction is isiZulu or Sesotho.Methods: Qualitative content analysis and discourse analysis were used to analyse interview data of four purposefully selected teachers.Results: Teachers' discourse showed that they were able to reflect on their teaching and to provide examples of how children's language, the environment and executive functions could feature in their early numeracy development. Yet, the teachers did not link theoretical ideas to their personal pedagogical theories. Conc...

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 reasoning capabilities, predicted their performance on a numeracy assessment at the beginning of Grade 1. A purposive intact group of 59 participants was assessed at the beginning of their Grade R year and again when they entered Grade 1. The results of the study indicate that, apart from existing or prior numeracy knowledge at the beginning of Grade R, mathematics-specific vocabulary was the strongest predictor for numeracy attainment at the beginning of Grade 1. We suggest that early grade teachers consider young children’s number concept development as a cognitive, developmental psychology phenomenon and that they help learners build a lexicon of mathematics-specific qualifiers in their teaching with words that represent concepts of, among others, space, position, comparison, inclusion, sequence and magnitude.