Fostering Understanding of Early Numeracy Development

In 2012, the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) began the Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy Study: Transitions from Preschool to School (LLANS:TPS). The study is part of a program of longitudinal literacy and numeracy research at ACER that started with a seven-year longitudinal study of children’s developing literacy and numeracy throughout primary school, which began in 1999 with a cohort of 1000 children from 100 schools around Australia (Meiers et al., 2006). The original Longitudinal Literacy and Numeracy Study (LLANS) developed new instruments for assessing children’s literacy and numeracy understanding in the first three years of primary school and described growth in skills over the entire seven years of primary school. The purpose of this report is to describe the numeracy skills of the preschool children (at the end of the year prior to starting school) who participated in the first year of LLANS:TPS. A better understanding of the numeracy knowledge and skills of preschool children has two important outcomes for early childhood educators and early years teachers: knowing what knowledge and skills can be fostered among young children, and understanding the early numeracy foundation on which formal instruction can build. We describe patterns of understanding of preschool children participating in LLANS:TPS in six significant areas of early numeracy: numbers and counting, sharing, number comparison and ordering, calculations, patterns, shapes and measurement