When a 1st Grader Thinks that 5 is Larger than 11…

Posted on Thursday June 14th, 2012 by Deepa Srikantaiah

Number recognition, counting, a mental number line, addition, subtraction…these are all basic mathematics skills that children in pre-school and grades 1 to 3 learn and build on to be successful in mathematics.  However, this is not the case in many of the countries where the Global Partnership works. 

For example, in 2009, when the Early Grade Mathematics Assessment (EGMA), developed by RTI, was piloted in Kenya, the data from the assessment reported that only 25.7% of the grade 3 students they tested could perform simple (single digit) subtraction problems.  That means that 75% of these grade 3 students cannot even subtract 5 from 9, and these children are not close to learning any other mathematical concepts like multiplication, division, and problem-solving.  In OECD countries, an average child age 8, in grade 3, would be proficient in adding and subtracting whole numbers.   

Another example is in rural India, where ASER 2011 reports that in grade 3: Only 26.9% of children can recognize numbers 1-9; 35.7% of children can recognize numbers 11-99; and 23.2% of children can subtract.   Since close to 60% of students in rural India cannot recognize numbers, they cannot do any type of operations (addition, subtraction, etc.).

This illustrates that these children do not have a strong number sense, or conceptual understanding of numbers.  These concepts should have been developed in pre-school and in grades 1 and 2.

Although the quality of teaching, textbooks, and other resources are important to help these students develop solid number senses, the problem also stems to the children’s home and family environment.  These children’s social and cultural capital is very different from the average child in an OECD country.   They come from struggling communities – their parents may be illiterate, and/or working two to three jobs a day, and therefore, they do not have the skills or time to spend teaching the basics of counting and numeracy to their children.   Unlike in OECD countries, where an average child comes to pre-school with the ability to at least count to 20, in the Global Partnership’s partner countries, we do not see this.

Therefore, once children are attending pre-school or primary school, their prior knowledge needs to be taken into consideration, and thus teacher training and curriculum and textbook development need to adapt to these student needs.

Obviously, the knowledge children do or do not come to school with varies not only by country, but by a country’s region, whether the child lives in a rural area or urban area, and the child’s SES. 

Taking this all into consideration, I am currently in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, working with the Ministry of Education Youth and Sport to assess the prior knowledge which students come to school with.  I am working with six schools, of different student populations, in Phnom Penh, and the findings from the study will help the Ministry develop appropriate teacher training, curriculum, and textbooks.

I’ll be here for three weeks, and sharing stories and experiences as field notes as I work with these schools.

Thanks for following me on this journey!