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In this article we share the findings emanating from a 20 year (2003–2022) review of South African Early Grade Mathematics (EGM) research articles published in key international and local/regional journals. The review shows a substantial increase in the volume of published EGM articles in the second decade (2013–2022), nationally and internationally. These increases are marked across the key clusters of articles seen in our analysis: Teachers and Teaching, Learners and Learning, Language and Multilingualism, and Assessment. The emergence of the South African Journal of Childhood Education as a phase-specific journal in 2011 has been a particularly important factor within the increasing volume of publication. We note too, that whilst the base of publication across institutions has broadened in the local/regional publication space, international publications are tied primarily to projects linked with established South African Research Chairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the Southern African Association for Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education's (SAARMSTE's) role as a platform supporting research dissemination and connecting researchers in early grades mathematics (EGM) in the Southern African region. A review of the Long Papers in SAARMSTE over the last 20 years supports the finding of the other review papers in this Special Issue: that there has been substantial growth of attention to EGM since 2013. However, two distinctions are marked when looking at conference papers rather than journal papers. Firstly, there is a particularly large expansion of work in the last 5 years, with a broadening base of participation in this work. Second, looking across all the formats of conference presentations indicates SAARMSTE's role in supporting and building EGM as a key focus of research attention, and bringing together regional and international groups with interests in this area. Given that conference proceedings usually offer a broader picture of emerging interests than journal papers, we reflect on the range of foci of attention within EGM in the SAARMSTE Proceedings, and trends within this. These trends also help us to point to areas that are likely to be of key interest in the next decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Grade R teacher expressions of themselves as teachers of numeracy, and as teachers working in the transition phase of schooling, after their participation in a research-informed numeracy-focused professional development (PD) intervention. The Early Number Fun (ENF) programme had 33 teachers from 17 Eastern Cape schools participating monthly over 18 months. Inclusion of Grade R to schooling is relatively new following policy changes in Early Childhood Development. In-service support tends to be subsumed within the Foundation Phase without attention to the specialised nature of Grade R that emphasises learning through play. ENF focused on the development of specialised teacher knowledge to support the development of early number sense through play, particularly with conceptual manipulatives. Data sources include three pre-, during, and post-PD questionnaires. Findings reveal that participation in ENF, and access to multiple research informed numeracy resources, supported teachers in their relationship with numeracy and the teaching thereof. Questionnaire responses indicate greater confidence in themselves as knowledgeable teachers of numeracy and that belonging to the ENF community supported navigation of positive professional identities within the mixed messages of policy. The findings contribute to the community-supported field of Grade R PD research and early numeracy teaching and learning. In concluding we discuss implications of this research for Grade R PD and for policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflective practice is a crucial element of professional growth that is gaining in popularity in teacher education, yet the ability to reflect is a skill that is neither natural nor easy to develop. This paper reports on an investigation that sought to establish if pre-service teachers at a South African university – in the process of learning to reflect on practice through analysing video-recorded lessons – reflected differently when reflecting on their own practice from the way they reflected on the practice of other teachers. Pre-service teachers were introduced to the Six Lens Framework as a tool to aid reflection on mathematics teaching. The authors compared two sets of reflections written by four pre-service teachers (PSTs) who participated in the study. One set was based on a video-recorded lesson of another teacher's practice while the other was based on a video-recording of their own practice. The study found that the PSTs' reflections in both cases were generally at the lowest level of the reflection spectrum. They mostly described classroom events rather than analysing the lessons to provide explanation suggestions, or reflectivity. We found, however, that all four PSTs reflected at substantially greater length on their own lessons than on those of other teachers. Furthermore, three of the four teachers' reflections on their own practice focused on mathematical rather than general aspects and provided more suggestions for improvement than their reflections on the practice of other teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]