“We don’t have things for counting”: An exploration of early numeracy skills and home learning experiences of children growing up in poverty in South Africa

Abstract

A child’s home environment has been shown to be related to the development of earlynumeracy skills in some countries. However, significant relationships between home learningenvironment and math achievement have not consistently been found, and likely vary acrossdifferent cultural and socio-political contexts. Here we explored the home environment andearly numeracy skills of 187 children (3-5 years), who were not attending preschoolprogrammes in very low-income settings in Cape Town, South Africa. Caregiverscompleted a questionnaire including information regarding experiences of children in thehome; children completed a number identification task, a counting task and the Give-N task. The amount of resources in the home learning environment, frequency of home learning activities caregivers did with their children, and caregiver levels of education and income were not associated with number knowledge. While the home learning environment has been shown to be important for developing early numeracy skills in previous research, this study suggests that factors other than the home learning environment may also be important targets to foster numeracy skills and school readiness in low-income settings in South Africa.

IDELA paper

“…Other data from the larger study have been published elsewhere (Cook et al, 2022;Draper et al, 2023;Merkley et al, 2022).…”

“…The HLE scale includes frequency of home learning activities; and books and toys in the home. The use of this scale in this study has been described in more detail elsewhere (Merkley et al, 2022).…”