Content Analysis of Mathematics Textbooks and Adapted Lorentz Curves

In this paper, we introduce an adaption of the Lorenz curve as a powerful tool for graphicallypresenting content analyses of mathematics textbooks. Three textbooks currently used withyear-one children in Sweden, one Swedish-, one Finnish and one Singaporean-authored, wereanalysed against the eight categories of Foundational Number Sense (FoNS), which is a set ofliterature-derived and instruction-dependent competences that all children need to acquire ifthey are to become successful learners of mathematics. The adapted Lorenz curvehighlighted, inter alia, major differences in the distribution of FoNS-related tasks across thethree textbooks. In general, the Swedish-authored textbook offers repeated cycles of FoNSrelated opportunities, the Finnish-authored textbook offers such opportunities continuously,and the Singaporean-authored textbook typically offers FoNS-related opportunities onlywithin its earlier pages.
FoNS - Foundational Number Sense