Teaching young learners pre-number concepts through ICT mediation

Abstract

This study focuses on the teaching and learning of the pre-numeracy concepts through technology at Foundation Phase. It pre-supposes that the use of information and communication technology resources presents an innovative way to improve teaching and learning mathematics. The author argues that young children's relational conceptions of number lie at the core of their mathematics education as any subsequent mathematics learning heavily depends on it. This learning process is by no little means assisted through the mathematical activities teachers engage their learners and the resources they avail them, such as information and communication technologies. Principally important are the discursive interactions that ought to arise around the activities and the resources used. The author presumes that mastery learning is advanced by teaching using the variation theory. Teaching through variation aims to anchor knowledge; to make mathematical knowledge visible to amateurs through distinguishing the essential features of an ‘object of learning’ from its non-essential features. A treatment group was taught with information and communication technologies against a control group that used traditional teaching methods. Despite other intervening variables, the results of the study suggested better learning outcomes from the experimental group.