ABSTRACT
Since the publication of the fi rst edition of this chapter, there has been a surge in interest and research in early childhood mathematics education across the world. There have been a number of important special issues of mathematics education research and more general educational research journals (British Education Research Journal, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Mathematics Education Research Journal), as well as many other reports and articles, devoted to early childhood mathematics education. In, for example, the United States (National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)/National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and Australia (Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (AAMT)/Early Childhood Australia (ECA)), the national mathematics education and early childhood associations have joined together to produce position statements on early childhood mathematics education. The readiness to learn prerogative of the United States and its No Child Left Behind legislation have also stimulated a great deal of investigation in the early childhood years, particularly in the areas of literacy and numeracy. The importance of brain research and its impact on and recognition of early intervention programs is also pertinent here as are large scale research programs such as the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education project in the United Kingdom (Sylva, Melhuish, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford, & Taggett, 2004) and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (Germino-Hausken, 2006) in the United States. Further, many research-based systemic early childhood mathematics education programs have been established in prior-to-school2 and school settings. Examples include the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies in the United Kingdom (Askew & Brown, 2001; Aubrey, 2004), Count Me In Too in Australia (Bobis, 2003; Bobis et al., 2005), the New Zealand Numeracy Development Project (Bobis et al., 2005; Thomas, Tagg, & Ward, 2003) and programs such as Building Blocks (Sarama & Clements, 2002, 2004) and Big Math for Little Kids (Greenes, Ginsburg, & Balfanz, 2004) in the United States. A further emphasis has been placed on the prior-to-school years and early years of school through more general transition to school research across the world, which highlights the importance of pedagogical, if not structural, continuity across the time of children starting school (Dockett & Perry, 2007). The time is right for a revised consideration of the state of early childhood mathematics education research.
