Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) recognizes that there is a need to provide better and more targeted supports from students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) students across the Commonwealth. To inform these supports, districts are looking for a numeracy and literacy screener that can both…

While most of the outcomes of the current COVID-19 pandemic are not good, occasionally one can identify a positive outcome from even the worst situations. The Coronavirus outbreak has provided a special opportunity to get a pulse on how well the society understands science and mathematics processes. Social media amplifies the voice of citizens…

Our everyday lives have been transformed in 2020. Key features of this transformation have been the significance of COVID-related numeracy in our everyday lives and the realisation of the story it might tell about lives, health and death. In recent years, governments and educators around the world have been advocating for numeracy as an essential…

Post-truthism entered mainstream consciousness after being named "Oxford Dictionary's" word of the year in 2016, denoting a turn in the Western relationship with truth as a certain and indisputable object. Simultaneously, and paradoxically, rising distrust around teachers' professional judgement and a desire for certainty in practice saw…

Strong basic literacy and numeracy skills are important foundations for making sound financial decisions. Curriculum design, pedagogical methods and stakeholder involvement can all be harnessed to build student financial knowledge and well-being. This "Trends Shaping Education Spotlight" touches on growing financial risks for…

In Australia, the term "numeracy" is used to describe "the competence and disposition to use mathematics to meet the general demands of life at home, in paid work, and for participation in community and civic life" (Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers 1997, p. 15). The implemented mathematics curriculum is…

Success in math is important to all students; it provides them with college and career options in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In the middle grades, students build upon the critical skills taught in elementary school and prepare for entry into algebra, which is considered a gateway to later achievement in school…

The collection of studies in this special issue make an important contribution to our understanding and measurement of the core cognitive and noncognitive factors that influence children's emerging quantitative competencies. The studies also illustrate how the field has matured, from a time when the quantitative competencies of infants and young…

The Teachers First initiative is a grass-roots cluster-model approach for bringing together primary and secondary teachers and school principals: to analyse student performance data; design and practice activities and assessment tools; and promote teaching practices that address students' learning difficulties in mathematics. The balance of both…

What is important for citizens to know and be able to do? The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) seeks to answer that question through the most comprehensive and rigorous international assessment of student knowledge and skills. The PISA 2015 Assessment and Analytical Framework presents the conceptual foundations of the…

The introduction of negative numbers should mean that mathematics can be twice as much fun, but unfortunately they are a source of confusion for many students. Difficulties occur in moving from intuitive understandings to formal mathematical representations of operations with negative and positive integers. This paper describes a series of…

Just as mathematical ability begins to form in early childhood, so, too, does the knowledge gap separating low-income children from their more affluent peers, who generally enter school with much greater math knowledge. This gap is troubling given that early deficits in mathematical knowledge can have profound implications for future learning. One…

Financial literacy refers to the ability to make informed judgements and to take effective decisions regarding the use and management of money. A baseline survey carried out by the Financial Services Agency (FSA) in 2006 highlighted many issues: (1) 29% of 16-4-year-olds said they would not know how to prepare and manage a weekly budget; (2) 19%…

One of the most important goals in primary education is to guarantee literacy and numeracy, two crucial notational systems. Before schooling, children develop some fundamental knowledge on notations from which formal learning should depart. The literature has studied this knowledge, focusing on the development of notational production and…

Mathematical literacy is more than numeracy; it is an individual's capacity to identify and understand the role that mathematics plays in the world and to make well-founded judgments that use and engage mathematics to meet his or her future needs as a constructive, concerned, and reflective citizen (Programme for International Student Assessment…