Using Mathematics to Understand the World: How Culture Promotes
Children's Mathematics offers fundamental insight into how mathematics
permeates our lives as a way of representing and thinking about the
world.
Internationally renowned experts Terezinha Nunes and Peter Bryant
examine research into children's mathematical development to show why it
is important to distinguish between quantities, relations and numbers.
Using Mathematics to Understand the World presents a theory about the
development of children's quantitative reasoning and reveals why and how
teaching about quantitative reasoning can be used to improve children's
mathematical attainment in school. It describes how learning about the
analytical meaning of numbers is established as part of mathematics at
school but quantitative reasoning is emphasized less even though it is
increasingly acclaimed as essential for thinking mathematically and for
using mathematics to understand the world.
This essential text is for all students of mathematics education,
developmental psychology and cognitive psychology. By including
activities for parents and professionals to try themselves, it may help
you to recognize your own quantitative reasoning.