Abstract
South African students’ poor mathematics performance on national and international tests can be attributed to the gap the children begin schooling with from different socio economics homes. Wright et al assert that this gap continues to grow the longer students are in school. Early childhood research highlights the significant educational gains of exposing young children to quality, structured mathematical play or activity that goes beyond what is learned within the family and community. South Africa has high levels of poverty and inequality and also has tremendous difficulties in overcoming these inequalities. Most provision of quality pre-school education is private, self-funded and not targeted to poor children resulting to different levels of mathematics readiness prior entry to primary school. This paper argues for quality mathematics interventions, longitudinal studies on impact of such interventions and tracking studies on schooling effects of early quality mathematics preparation, higher education effects, and labour market effects.
Highlights
Studies on factors that impede mathematics conceptualisation indicated that learning mathematics in a language that is not a student first language create complex processes, (Adler, 2001) Such challenges lead to code-switching that teachers are ashamed of (Setati & Adler, 2001 ) Little is known about the early exposure to mathematics stimulation
Childhood mathematics research from other countries played a significant role in improving quality mathematics practices, policy formulation and curriculum development
South African research needs to be rigorous in enabling the realization of the national integrated plan (NIP) on mathematics stimulation
Summary
Likewise Bowman, Donovan & Burns (2001); and Denton & West (2002) indicated that in the United Kingdom children from low socio economic backgrounds and minority-languages demonstrated lower levels of mathematics knowledge than their more advantaged peers, who assumedly have more exposure. This difference has been proven to increase over time (Denton and West, 2002; Wright, Martland & Stafford, 2000). In the South African literature studies on mathematical exposure of young children from low socio economic pre-school has proven that interventions yield to improved numeracy skills and teacher-child interaction (Hoppenbrouwer, 2011). Dawes (2008) and Richter et al (2012) suggested in addressing the varied quality of ECD provision
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