Opportunities for year-one children to acquire foundational number sense: Comparing English and Swedish adaptations of the same Singapore textbook.

We compare adaptations of a Singaporean year-one mathematics textbook for use in England and Sweden respectively. The texts were analysed in two different ways against the eight dimensions of Foundational Number Sense (FoNS), a set of core competences that the literature has shown to be necessary for year-one children’s later mathematical learning. The first analysis, based on frequencies, showed that neither adaptation incorporated any opportunities for children to acquire the two FoNS competence relating to estimation and number patterns respectively. They also showed that the English adaptation comprised significantly more tasks than the Swedish, particularly with respect to systematic counting, where the former comprised 26% more tasks than the latter. The second analysis, based on moving averages, showed that across five of the six FoNS categories for which there were data, the temporal location and emphases of FoNS-related learning were comparable, with,in particular, no such opportunities after the mid-point of the school year in either book. However, the English adaptation’s presentation of systematic counting, occurring at various points throughout the school year, was substantially different from the Swedish adaptation, highlighting differences due, we speculate, to interpretations of local didactical traditions.