Research Projects

A major policy objective of the Commonwealth Government is to provide all young people in Australia with strong foundational skills in literacy and numeracy. While Australian students have generally performed well in international tests of mathematics achievement, some groups of students perform significantly less well than expected.

In the early childhood years, teachers and other care-givers play a critical role in developing children’s numeracy, not only in formal settings. Nevertheless, it is in the formal settings of the pre-school and school where children’s development in numeracy becomes a key responsibility. The design of a numeracy learning environment is dependent on the early years professional’s ‘centre’ of learning, and research evidence provides indications of strategies that, if universally applied, may well improve the outcomes for all students. To provide insights into effective strategies, Project Good Start was developed. Project Good Start is an Australia-wide longitudinal study of effective numeracy practices in the year before school and in the first year of school.

The aims of Project Good Start are to:

  * identify effective numeracy practices in Early Childhood settings;
  * identify parent and community understandings of numeracy;
  * examine the results of effective numeracy programs on young children.

Each of these objectives provides a different ‘lens’ through which to view effective strategies for children’s numeracy development. This richer information provides critical guidance for practitioners and systems that will, in the long term, have an impact far greater than if each objective were to be investigated alone.