What are the processes involved in mathematical teaching and learning?
A second set of issues revolves around the processes of teaching and learning. Mathematics has seldom been taught at the early childhood level. Consequently we know little about how to teach it or how children learn it. Most of the cognitive developmental research that has provided a revolution in the way we conceptualize young children s mathematical abilities does not focus at all on teaching or on how children learn from teaching and in an educational context. The various curricula are research-based mostly in the sense that they are inspired by research on children s mathematical competence, and not in the sense that they derive from the research any particular guidance on how to present or teach any topic. Therefore, we need research, some of which needs to be exploratory, that focuses on teaching and on children s learning from teaching in an organized setting. Because so little is known about these topics, this kind of research will ultimately be of great practical value to teac
