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Relying on a comprehensive review of the research, Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood lays out the critical areas that should be the focus of young children's early mathematics education, explores the extent to which they are currently being incorporated in early childhood settings, and identifies the changes needed to improve the quality of mathematics experiences for young children.

Mathematics Learning Difficulties in the Early Primary School Years

"Contrary to what you've probably read, you don't have to be engaging to be a great teacher-at least not in any charismatic and charming sense of the word. You can be relatively "boring" and lead students to outstanding academic progress, mainly by staying organized, being reflective, flexible, and in constant contact with an active and ambitious professional learning networking. Teaching differently requires work."

Second section focuses on teaching early childhood and elementary mathematics

A five-year NSF backed study suggests early interventions in teaching and learning

Sending this on to the UMIGO group - we are involving parents of low-income kids with tech&math...

"Why Learn It (WLI) aims to address the issue of motivation around learning math by helping students explore the beauty and relevance of what they would otherwise dismiss as inconsequential in school. Targeting late middle-school and early high-school students, WLI takes a hybrid approach to cultivat- ing motivation. It leverages the engagement value of short (approximately three-minute long) videos depicting real people talking about how math and computational thinking are critical to their successes in a number of professional areas. Students then complete a series of interactive exercises that help students explore an application area discussed in the video in more detail. These exercises, however, are not simply drill problems aimed at making students experts in a particular content area. Instead, they are multi-step assignments that require the students to draw upon both detailed mathematical knowledge and a big picture view of how this knowledge can be used to draw useful, meaningful conclusions. The exercises are focused on bridging the worlds of number, images, and sounds in or- der to help students build intuition around a particular topic. Therefore, while some questions have objectively correct responses, others require students to gather knowledge they have built through answering previous questions within the packet to draw new inferences. Hints are provided along the 1 way to ensure students receive assistance when necessary. Finally, WLI is housed online and is oered for free, signifying minimal barriers to usage by educators and students."

Experiments by University of Chicago psychologists with deaf people in Nicaragua who learned "homesigns" rather than formal sign language, could not count beyond three. In contrast, people learning sign language learn number words and number concept and understand large numbers. The findings ""suggest that language is an important player in number acquisition." The research is reported in PNAS: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/01/31/1015975108.abstract

From the abstract: "is research develops around a technological intervention intended to transform a peer produced reference resource into a peer produced learning environment. An early Web 2.0 community for mathematics, PlanetMath.org, will henceforth become a mathematical practicum, and a laboratory for learning science."

"This National report examines the way in which teaching, learning and assessment is conceptualised in Welsh policy for early years science and mathematics, and the role for creativity. This report is one of 13 European national policy reports that are contributing to the Creative Little Scientist Project deliverable (D3.2 Report on Mapping and Comparing Recorded Practices) mapping and comparing policy approaches across Europe. In order to map the key messages in Welsh policy, as well as allow comparisons with other nations, this report draws upon a survey instrument used to rate the extent to which certain approaches, and the role of creativity is emphasised across relevant policy documents in this area. In the case of Wales, this was largely based upon the Framework for Children's Learning for 3 to 7 year olds in Wales, Play/Active Learning: overview for 3 to 7 year olds, the National Curriculum documents for Key Stage 2, associated assessment documents and inspection reports. "

Abstract "This article reports on a case study of the web-based educational maths application, Mathletics. The findings are drawn from an ethnographic study of children's technology use in Melbourne, Australia. We explore the experience, governance and commerce of children's Mathletics use, and offer insights into the developing possibilities and challenges emerging through the adoption of Web 2.0 applications for learning and education." (Full text requires subscription or purchase)

A discussion of early advanced mathematics.

Concludes from research studies involving five-year-old school children in Dubai that iPads help improve numeracy learning in young children as well as increase motivation through "kinaesthetic and play-based learning":"