ABSTRACT
The research discussed here is concerned with implications of the premise that numeracy is a social practice. The object of the research was to look closely at children's numeracy practices; to compare those that children use in a variety of domains; to find differences and similarities in order to set up frameworks within which children's numeracy practices could be viewed and analysed in order to inform educational endeavour. The investigation was stimulated by the awareness
that some children move easily between formal and informal school numeracy practices whilst others who succeed in informal settings find formal numeracy practices problematic. There are many possible reasons for these difficulties and some of them have been discussed elsewhere - for example Nunes, Schliemann and Carraher (1993). However, the model of numeracy practices put forward in this article and the frameworks that resulted from the work provide a different means of analysis and a different perspective.
