National Report Calls For More Early Math

Last week by the National Research Council released an extensive report which argues that children need more math instruction in early childhood than they are getting now – much more. Why? Because children are not only ready to learn but are in fact learning math long before they enter a preschool classroom.

Research shows that even in infancy children develop an implicit understanding of basic mathematical concepts, such as shapes and spatial relationships. The NRC report details the “foundational and achievable” math content that can and should be taught to children in the early years to support and nurture what children are already learning from the world around them. Teachers can help by focusing and building upon this spontaneous learning.

The question for many teachers, then, is not whether but how to teach math to children at such young ages. Many teachers are uneasy — or even “afraid” — to teach math to pre-K students, according to a recent policy brief from the Society for Research in Child Development. The SRCD report’s authors — Herbert P. Ginsburg, Joon Sun Lee and Judi Stevenson Boyd — attribute this ambivalence to the weakness of early math pedagogy in teacher preparation programs. The NRC’s report devotes an entire chapter to the need to strengthen teacher preparation programs, plus two more chapters to “teaching-learning paths” (the concepts children can learn at different ages, and how they demonstrate that learning) for the various domains of early math instruction, including number operations, spatial thinking, and measurement.

The NRC report makes an important distinction between explicit, teacher-led “direct instruction” in early math, and “intentional teaching,” where a teacher adapts math instruction to different learning experiences, including large group instruction and child-initiated play. As I told Education Week last week, more math learning in early childhood classrooms does not have to mean less time for play. Children can learn math on the playground (“How many rocks do you have in your pail?”) and with a crayon their hand (“Which of those two spiders you drew is bigger?”).

While policymakers and early educators must recognize that children begin learning math before they enter pre-K or kindergarten, they must also keep an eye on math learning in elementary school, too, where a strong mathematics instruction is crucial to preparing the next generation of science and technology professionals. While the NRC report focuses only on children aged 3 to 6, its recommendations have big implications for math instruction in the later elementary grades. As we all learned in elementary school, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line; the most effective way to teach math is via a straight, seamless pathway between early childhood environments and the K-12 system, with the quality and quantity of math instruction growing along with the child.