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In this paper we present analyses of three textbooks currently used in the teaching of mathematics to year-one children in England. One is an established English-authored textbook, while the others are Singaporean-authored imports promoted by government as solutions to perceptions of systemic failure. Every task in each textbook was coded against a set of eight number-related competences known to support children's learning in both short and long terms. Such a framework, which is literature-derived and curriculum-independent, enables meaningful comparison of materials deriving from different cultural contexts. Analyses of the proportions of all tasks coded for the different competences showed that none of the three books adequately addresses all eight competences, although the English-authored comes closest. Moving averages, undertaken to show the temporal location of the opportunities presented for children to acquire the eight competences, showed them distributed throughout the school year in the English-authored textbook but only during the first half of the school year in the two Singaporean-authored textbooks. Some implications for the importation of such materials are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measures of association, which typically require pairwise data, are widespread in many aspects of educational research. However, due to the need to reduce their content to equal numbers of units of analysis, they are rarely found in the analysis of textbooks. In this paper, we present two methods for overcoming this limitation, one through the use of disjoint sections and the other through the use of overlapping moving averages. Both methods preserve the temporal structure of data and enable researchers to calculate a measure of association which, in this case, is the complementary Euclidean average distance, as an indicator of the books' similarity. We illustrate these approaches by means of a comparative analysis of three commonly-used English and Swedish mathematics textbooks. Analyses were focused on individual tasks, which had all been coded according to the presence or absence of particular characteristics. Both methods produce nearly identical results and are robust with respect to both densely and sparsely occurring characteristics. For both methods, widening the aggregation window results in a slightly increased level of quantified similarity, which is the result of the 'smoothing effect'. We discuss the relation between the window width and the choice of research question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, motivated in part by evidence that Swedish teachers are sceptical of parents' abilities to offer appropriate support, we present an exploratory investigation of the activities Swedish parents initiate to facilitate their year-one (first grade) children's learning of mathematics. Data, derived from 25 semi-structured interviews conducted with parents from three demographically different schools, were subjected to constant comparison analyses and yielded three broad categories of activity. These concerned the use of games in the learning of mathematics, contextualised mathematics activities like cooking and shopping, and decontextualised mathematics activities like systematic counting. Collectively, the results indicate that while parents of year-one children are confident supporting their children's learning of mathematics, they are also conscious of the need to avoid both undermining schools' efforts and exacerbating educational inequity. With few exceptions, the activities parents described were age-appropriate and more likely to complement teachers' actions than not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an exploratory study of English and Swedish teachers' perspectives on the role of homework in year-one children's learning of number. In order to ensure cultural integrity, data were analysed independently by two colleagues in each context. Analyses yielded three broad but cross-culturally common themes reflecting culturally situated notions of common sense. These concerned the existence of homework, the purpose of homework and the role of parents in homework's completion. While homework was unproblematic for all English teachers, half the Swedish cohort spoke against it, arguing that variation in home background would compromise principles of equity. All teachers who set homework, whether English or Swedish, spoke of homework as a means of supporting children at risk of falling behind their peers, a process by which children practice routine skills. English teachers' homework-related justifications were located in a discourse of target setting that was invisible in the Swedish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present statistical analyses of three textbooks used by Swedish teachers to support year one children's learning of mathematics. One, Eldorado, is authored by Swedish teachers, another, Favorit, is a Swedish adaptation of a popular Finnish series and the third, Singma, is a Swedish adaptation of a Singapore series. Data were coded against the eight categories of foundational number sense, which are the number-related competences literature has shown to be essential for the later mathematical success of year one learners. Two analyses were undertaken; the first was a frequency analysis of the tasks coded for a particular category, the second was a time-series analysis highlighting the temporal location of such opportunities. The frequency analyses identified statistically significant differences with respect to children's opportunities to acquire foundational number sense. Additionally, the time series showed substantial differences in the ways in which such tasks were located in the structure of the textbooks. Such differences, we argue, offer substantial didactical challenges to teachers trying to adapt their practices to the expectations of such imports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, drawing on semi-structured interviews with generalist teachers of year-one children in England and Sweden, we examine comparatively the influence of the intended curriculum (teachers in both countries work within mandated national curricula) and the received curriculum (the collectively assumed efficacious practices and goals handed down from one generation of teachers to the next) on teachers’ expressed number-related learning goals. Analyses, framed by a literature-derived and curriculum-independent set of eight forms of number-related competence each implicated in later mathematical learning, identified both similarities and differences in the two groups’ expressed goals. Key similarities concerned expectations that all children should become additively competent, supported by supplementary goals concerning systematic counting, number bonds, the number line and an appropriate mathematical terminology. Key differences concerned English teachers’ strongly-expressed emphasis on place value and a desire for children to learn to multiply. Overall, the strongly-framed English curriculum appears to influence teachers’ goals more than the weakly-framed Swedish, while Swedish teachers seem to draw on a received curriculum more closely aligned with the literature-derived developmental goals than the English. Finally, when set against the literature-derived and curriculum-independent developmental goals, the English curriculum, unlike the Swedish, expects year-one children to learn much age-inappropriate material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of the content of school textbooks, particularly in a time of cross-cultural borrowing, is a growing field restricted by the tools currently available. In this paper, drawing on the analyses of three English year-one mathematics textbooks, we show how two approaches to the analysis of sequential data not only supplement conventional frequency analyses but highlight trends in the content of such textbooks hidden from frequency analyses alone. The first, moving averages, is conventionally used in science to eliminate noise and demonstrate trends in data. The second, Lorenz curves, is typically found in the social sciences to compare different forms of social phenomena. Both, as we show, extend the range of questions that can be meaningfully asked of textbooks. Finally, we speculate as to how both approaches can be used with other forms of ordered classroom data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an exploratory study of English and Swedish teachers' perspectives on the role of parents in year one children's learning of number. Drawing on the results of semi-structured interviews, data from each cohort were analysed independently to ensure the cultural integrity of any response categories and the results of this process compared. Two broad themes were identified concerning implicit and explicit forms of parental involvement. The former, manifested similarly across the two cohorts, concerned the importance of parents presenting children with positive attitudes towards mathematics. The latter, incorporating three comparable subthemes, focused on the creation of number-rich home environments, home–school communication and parents' role in the completion of homework. All three subthemes differentiated the cohorts in ways that highlighted teachers' culturally situated perspective on teaching and learning. Some implications are discussed, particularly with respect to the challenge this study poses for developers of cross-cultural survey instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The most striking consequence of a heart attack is the loss of billions of heart muscle cells, alongside damage to the associated vasculature. The lost cardiovascular tissue is replaced by scar formation, which is non-functional and results in pathological remodelling of the heart and ultimately heart failure. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the heart regeneration field has centred efforts to generate new muscle and blood vessels through targeting cardiomyocyte proliferation and angiogenesis following injury. However, combined insights from embryological studies and regenerative models, alongside the adoption of -omics technology, highlight the extensive heterogeneity of cell types within the forming or re-forming heart and the significant crosstalk arising from non-muscle and non-vessel cells. In this review, we focus on the roles of fibroblasts, immune, conduction system, and nervous system cell populations during heart development and we consider the latest evidence supporting a function for these diverse lineages in contributing to regeneration following heart injury. We suggest that the emerging picture of neurologically, immunologically, and electrically coupled cell function calls for a wider-ranging combinatorial approach to heart regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is known that an appropriately developed foundational number sense (FONS), or the ability to operate flexibly with number and quantity, is a powerful predictor of young children's later mathematical achievement. However, until now not only has FONS been definitionally elusive but instruments for identifying opportunities for children to acquire its various components have been missing from the classroom observation tools available. In this paper, drawing on a constant comparison analysis of appropriate literature, we outline the development of an eight dimensional FONS framework. We then show, by applying this framework to three culturally diverse European grade one lessons, one English, one Hungarian and one Swedish, that it is both straightforwardly operationalised and amenable to cross cultural analyses of classroom practice. Some implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we compare how three teachers, one from each of Finland, Flanders and Hungary, introduce linear equations to grade 8 students. Five successive lessons were videotaped and analysed qualitatively to determine how teachers, each of whom was defined against local criteria as effective, addressed various literature-derived equations-related problems. The analyses showed all four sequences passing through four phases that we have called definition, activation, exposition and consolidation. However, within each phase were similarities and differences. For example, all three constructed their exposition around algebraic equations and, in so doing, addressed concerns relating to students’ procedural perspectives on the equals sign. All three teachers invoked the balance as an embodiment for teaching solution strategies to algebraic equations, confident that the failure of intuitive strategies necessitated a didactical intervention. Major differences lay in the extent to which the balance was sustained and teachers’ variable use of realistic word problems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this paper, we examine the national curricula for primary mathematics for each of the four constituent nations of the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) for the estimation-related opportunities they offer children. Framed against four conceptually and procedurally different forms of estimation (computational, measurement, quantity and number line), the analyses indicate that computational estimation and measurement estimation were addressed in all four curricula, albeit from a skills-acquisition perspective, with only the Scottish offering any meaningful justification for their inclusion. The process of rounding, absent in the Northern Ireland curriculum, was presented as an explicit learning objective in the English, Scottish and Welsh curricula, although it was only the Scottish that made explicit the connections between rounding and computational estimation. In all curricula, both quantity estimation and number line estimation were effectively absent, as was any explicit acknowledgement that learning to estimate, irrespective of its form, has a developmental role in the learning of other mathematical topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, motivated by the desire to understand which forms of parent-initiated activity are productively implicated in young children's mathematics learning, we present a methodological critique of recent research. Many such studies, based on assumptions that parent-initiated activities can be categorised as formal or informal, direct or indirect, or advanced or basic, exploit surveys to elicit how frequently parents engage their children in various predetermined activities. While such survey data have the potential to yield important insights, the analytical procedures typically employed prevent them. Studies involving factor analyses yield uninterpretable factors, which are then used to create summative variables based on the scores of individual activities. Other studies, drawing on untested preconceptions, simply create summative variables. In all cases, these summative variables are based on such a wide range of qualitatively different activities that labels like formal or informal become arbitrary and the potential of individual activities to support learning gets lost beneath colleagues' desires for statistical significance. In closing, we ask colleagues, albeit somewhat rhetorically, what is the purpose of such research? Is it to identify those activities that support learning or to offer statistically robust factors, which, due to the diversity of activities embedded within them, offer few useful insights? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategy use in single-digit addition is an indicator of young children's numeracy comprehension. We investigated Danish primary students' use of strategies in single-digit addition with interview-based assessment of how they solved 36 specific single-digit addition problems, categorised as either 'error', 'counting', 'direct retrieval' or 'derived facts'. The proportional use of each strategy was analysed as multi-level functions of school age and sex. In a first study (260 interviews, 147 students) we found decreasing use of counting and increasing use of direct retrieval and derived facts through years 1–4, girls using counting substantially more and the other two strategies substantially less than boys, equal to more than 2 years' development. Similar results appeared in a subsequent study (155 interviews, 83 students), suggesting that the pattern is pervasive in Danish primary schools. Finally, we ask whether sex differences in strategy use is generally under-reported since many studies do not explicitly address them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A correction to the article "Identifying Opportunities for Grade One Children to Acquire Foundational Number Sense: Developing a Framework for Cross Cultural Classroom Analyses" that was published in a previous issue is presented.

Finnish students' success on all three content domains of each of the four cycles of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has created much international interest. It has also prompted Finnish academics to offer systemic explanations typically linked to the structural qualities of Finnish schooling and teacher education. Less well-known has been the modest mathematics performance of Finnish grade 8 students on the two Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in which Finland has participated, which, when compared with its PISA successes, has created something of an enigma. In this paper, we attempt to shed light on this enigma through analyses of Finnish mathematics classroom practice that draw on two extant data sets-interviews with Finnish teacher educators and video-recordings of sequences of lessons taught on standard topics. Due to the international interest in Finnish PISA success, the analyses focus primarily on the resonance between classroom practice and the mathematical literacy component of the PISA assessment framework. The analyses indicate that Finnish mathematics didactics are more likely to explain the modest TIMSS achievements than PISA successes and allude to several factors thought to be unique to the Finns, which, unrelated to mathematics teaching practices, may be contributory to the repeated Finnish PISA successes. Some implications for policy-borrowing are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]