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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]

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]

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]

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]

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]