Child S Conception Of Number

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The authors report the results of some half dozen years of research into when and how children acquire numerical skills. They provide a new set of answers to these questions, and overturn much of the traditional wisdom on the subject. Table of Contents: 1. Focus on the Preschooler 2. Training Studies Reconsidered 3. More Capacity Than Meets the Eye: Direct Evidence 4. Number Concepts in the Preschooler? 5. What Numerosities Can the Young Child Represent? 6. How Do Young Children Obtain Their Representations of Numerosity? 7. The Counting Model 8. The Development of the How-To-Count Principles 9. The Abstraction and Order-Irrelevance Counting Principles 10. Reasoning about Number 11. Formal Arithmetic and the Young Child's Understanding of Number 12. What Develops and How Conclusions References Index Reviews of this book: The publication of this book may mark a sea change in the way that we think about cognitive development. For the past two decades, the emphasis has been on young children's limitations... Now a new trend is emerging: to challenge the original assumption of young children's cognitive incapacity. The Child's Understanding of Number represents the most original and provocative manifestation to date of this new trend. --Contemporary Psychology Reviews of this book: Here at last is the book we have been waiting for, or at any rate known we needed, on the young child and number. The authors are at once sophisticated in their own understanding of number and rich in psychological intuition. They present a wealth of good experiments to support and guide their intuitions. And all is told in so simple and unalarming a manner that even the most pusillanimous will be able to read with enjoyment. --Canadian Journal of Psychology

THE GREAT IMPORTANCE of the work of Professor Jean Piaget for child psychology, and thus for education, has only in recent years been fully recognized. This work has gone on for some thirty-five years, but the sequence of books translated between 1927 and 1932, though very stimulating, seemed open to a good many doubts. However, the volumes published in English during the last decade, and others still untranslated, have shown beyond question how much Pro­fessor Piaget can help us to understand children’s intellectual growth. We owe to him a striking fresh picture of the child himself as the architect of this growth. Piaget’s interest lies chiefly in the building-up of the basic framework of thought, which later the child, and we, mostly take for granted; but that is what makes the new picture so illuminating. And from the angle of Infant School teachers it is noteworthy that the period from 4-5 years to 7-8 years turns out to be a specially important one, anyway for the average run of children. For their biggest step forward in the building of that framework usually falls within this period. The present essay will offer a thumbnail sketch of the whole story, as Piaget presents it, and will then dwell more fully on the happenings of the Infant School phase.