Curriculum and mathematical coherence: exploring the tensions in teaching and learning number

Abstract This paper explores the tensions between two influences that currently shape the design of textbooks and other teaching resources. Through a textual analysis of primary school curricula from Australia and Mexico, we document a curricular trend in which number is framed almost exclusively in terms of counting. We explain that this trend works against instructional designs that aim, in line with instructional improvement recommendations, for classroom experiences of mathematical coherence. Drawing on the literature, we show that the analysed texts mirror the curricular decisions made during the New Math movement suggesting that this trend is likely to be common in many national curricula. By reviewing commonalities in examples of curricula shaped by alternative decisions, we highlight the features that enable curricula to support number instruction in which students experience mathematics as an activity characterised by internal coherence.