FULL REFERENCE: Méndez-Jurado, A. and Pearson, R. (2026). Mathematical skills instruction in 5-year-old children. NZ International Research in Early Childhood Education Journal, 28(1), 69-86.
ABSTRACT: Early mathematical skills are initially influenced by children´s home environment and later by formal instruction. This study analyses the relationship between teachers’ strategies and mathematical performance of five-year-old children attending kindergarten private schools across different socioeconomic contexts in Buenos Aires. Using a mixed-methods approach, this research integrates classroom observations and teachers’ interviews (n = 7) with the assessment of 132 children using a digital mathematical skills test. Results show that explicit instruction is linked to higher performance in basic numerical skills, such as counting and number recognition, while verbal calculation and problem-solving showed lower performance than expected. Non-symbolic numerical skills remain within the expected range despite the absence of formal instruction, suggesting that informal learning experiences at home play a significant role. Although children may acquire certain mathematical concepts implicitly, the findings suggest that more complex symbolic skills may benefit from systematic and explicit instructional opportunities.
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KEY WORDS: Mathematics, instruction, kindergarten, mathematical concepts, numerical skills, counting, number recognition, teacher strategies, teaching practices, mixed methods.
INTRODUCTION
Learning mathematics during early childhood implies not just acquiring number knowledge; it builds the essential cognitive framework for logical reasoning and paves the way to long-term academic achievement (Peake et al., 2021). Classroom instruction typically prioritises symbolic skills such as number recognition and the relationship between numbers and quantities (Cabrera Leonardini & Delgado Tovar, 2021), often within content-based teaching approaches (Clements et al., 2019).
Mathematical skills result from the interaction between specific numerical processing skills and domain-general functions (e.g. memory, reasoning). The mathematical skills include symbolic and non-symbolic skills. Symbolic skills include tasks with verbal or visual numerical symbols (e.g. counting, writing numbers, and comparing symbolic magnitudes). Non-symbolic skills entail the ability to represent quantities and compare magnitudes without relying on visual or verbal symbols (e.g. comparing groups of dots). Attention and executive functions are essential to support the representation and manipulation of mathematical relationships e.g., retrieval arithmetical facts, problem solving and operations (Geary & Moore, 2016; Amland et al., 2024).
