This is the first post in a series celebrating the latest round of podcasts hosted by the well known UK mathematics educator, Craig Barton. Craig is an author, trainer, podcaster and former classroom teacher. He is widely recognised for his research informed approach to teaching high school maths and his ability to translate complex ideas into practical classroom strategies. His podcast, books and training are an influential voice in maths teaching, along with his popular websites, including Mr Barton Maths and Eedi.

The first episode features Silke Goebel, a professor at the University of York (UK) and a challenge lead in the Centre for Early Mathematics Learning (CEML). In this podcast episode, she discussed with Craig about the linguistic influences on number processing. You can find the podcast here or search for it in your usual podcast app.

Silke writes:

As part of my involvement with the Centre of Early Mathematics Learning at Loughborough I had the exciting experience of being interviewed by Craig Barton. You can listen to the here. Craig Barton is a fantastic and engaging interviewer, and we covered a wide range of topics in our conversation. 

We started talking about the basic building blocks of numerical skills with a particular focus on exact numbers, i.e. number words (‘twenty-five’) and Indo-Arabic digits (25). Next, I touched upon how numbers are represented in the brain. We then moved on to discuss the differences in number word construction between languages and how that might affect numerical learning and number processing. Next, we considered whether the numerical bases used affect learning (for information beyond the podcast, see our review article The cognitive processing of numerical bases) and why children when they first learn digits often mirror-reverse digits when they write them down from memory.

We’d love to know what you think, so please drop us a line or get in touch with Silke if you’d like to know more about her work.

You can listen to the previous Research in Action series on Craig’s podcast page here.

This blog post was edited by Chris Shore.