Number Conservation: A Fair Assessment of Numerical Understanding?

Abstract

One of the implications which has been drawn from Piaget’s theory of the way in which children’s cognition is transformed over the years between birth and adolescence is that children are not ready to learn number concepts until they have acquired the more general cognitive abilities of conservation, classification and seriation at about 6 or 7 years of age. However, Piaget’s view of number development contrasts markedly with those of more recent writers for whom the role of counting has a major significance. The disagreement between these differing theoretical perspectives is outlined, with a focus on the suitability of the number conservation experiment as a method of gauging children’s numerical understanding. The relationship between counting and conservation is discussed and it is concluded that an overemphasis on children’s performance on number conservation greatly underestimates their numerical maturity and potential.