A review of early numeracy interventions for children at risk in mathematics

This study reviewed early numeracy interventions for four- to seven-year-old children at risk for mathematics difficulties. The search yielded 19 peer-reviewed studies with pre- and post-treatment control designs. The interventions were categorised as either core or supplemental instruction. The study analysed the effectiveness and identified the pedagogical components of the interventions: setting,duration,numeracy content used for intervention training and progress measurement,conductor and professional developmental support offered,and instructional design features. The interventions showed,to various degrees,the promising effect of improving the early numeracy skills of at-risk children. Results indicated that different types of instructional design features,including explicit instruction,computer-assisted instruction (CAI),game playing,or the use of concrete-representational-abstract levels in representations of math concepts,led to improvements in mathematics performance. The paper discusses the implications for practise and suggestions for future research.