It is with great pleasure that we present the current book, Special Issues in Early Childhood Mathematics Education Research, which we believe offers some new and interesting perspectives in the field of early childhood mathematics education.
Grey Duncan, Northwestern University Tarry Professor of Education and Social Policy and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research wrote: “Mastery of early math skills predicts not only future math achievement, it also predicts future reading achievement …. Early math skills have the greatest predictive power, followed by reading and then attention skills …. The paramount importance of early math skills − of beginning school with a knowledge of numbers, number order, and other rudimentary math concepts − is one of the puzzles coming out of the study”. We, too, believe, that giving young children mathematical skills will make a great contribution to their future: not only in the realm of mathematics, but also throughout their lives.
The purpose of writing this book was to present a cohesive yet far-reaching review of the current research being done in this field. Overall, we trust that this book presents a balanced set of research papers that reflects the essence of various aspects in early childhood mathematics education.
We believe that this book will be of interest to a broad audience: mathematics education researchers, teacher educators, mathematics teachers, kindergarten teachers, psychologists, and graduate students who are interested in early childhood mathematics.
We hope this book will contribute to the academic and educational world by not only emphasizing the importance of mathematics education in early childhood but in presenting ways and means of effecting that education.
Finally, we would like to thank Dr. Rina Hershkowitz, from the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel, for her constructive notes, comments, and invaluable help.