Computing by counting in the first grade: neither necessary nor benef...

Counting-onis widely promoted as an alternative to counting-all in the first grade.Alternatively, there are conceptions of initial arithmetic education that doskip counting-on, trying to build up derivation strategies in a systematic wayfrom the very beginning. This paper refers to an ongoing study that providessome empirical evidence in support of this alternative position. Students offour Austrian classes whose teachers participated in a training programmeaiming to promote derivation strategies were interviewed to ascertain theircomputation strategies at the end of their first school year. We present firstresults in comparison with a previous study that used the same tasks forinquiring a random sample of children whose arithmetic education followed, incontrast, a distinctively different pathway.