Over the last few decades, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries have increased their spending on education (Bertoni et al., 2018) significantly. Governments have raised the salaries of teachers to signal the importance of education and to attractmore students to select the teaching profession. Likewise, many reforms and programmes have been introduced to improve learning, especially in disadvantaged schools and areas. The available data suggest that increased spending combined with economic and social reforms have had an impact on educational outcomes such as improvement on primary and secondary completion rates and a slowly declining number of very poor performers. There has also beenmodest but sustained progress in closing the learning gap with more developed countries. However, education systems in LAC countries still lag significantly behind most developed countries in terms of student performance in international assessments, which illustrates persistent learning gaps. To guarantee that this slow progress in LAC countries would continue, we need to increase the amount of multidisciplinary collaboration in school development. One crucial aspect of the development of school and education is that the reforms should be based on tested ideas and solid research. Therefore, a constant dialogue between research and practice is required. To advance this discussion, we built this particular issue by inviting top experts from seven LAC countries to present the state-of-the-art situation in their countries. We focus on the current state of research in numerical cognition and how this new knowledge has or could contribute to educational practices. Naturally, raising the research on numerical cognition into focus for developing education and educational practices is a narrow perspective when we consider all the factors connected to learning and teaching. In Figure 1, we present a simplified influence diagram to put our question dealt with in this special issue in a broader context. The figure illustrates the complex and multifactorial nature of the whole topic as a research area.

中文翻译：

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拉丁美洲国家中的数字认知研究（研究拉丁裔美国人数）

在过去的几十年中，拉丁美洲和加勒比（LAC）国家在教育方面的支出大幅增加（Bertoni等，2018）。政府提高了教师的工资，以表明教育的重要性并吸引更多的学生选择教学专业。同样，已进行了许多改革和计划以改善学习，特别是在处境不利的学校和地区。现有数据表明，增加的支出与经济和社会改革相结合，对教育成果产生了影响，例如小学和中学学业完成率的提高以及表现很差的学生的数量缓慢下降。在缩小与较发达国家的学习差距方面也取得了适度但持续的进展。然而，就国际评估中的学生表现而言，拉丁美洲和加勒比国家的教育系统仍大大落后于大多数发达国家，这说明了持续的学习差距。为了确保拉丁美洲和加勒比国家的缓慢发展将继续下去，我们需要增加学校发展中的多学科合作。学校和教育发展的关键方面之一是，改革应基于经过检验的思想和扎实的研究。因此，需要在研究与实践之间进行持续的对话。为了推进这一讨论，我们通过邀请七个拉美和加勒比地区国家的高级专家介绍他们国家的最新情况来构建这一特殊问题。我们专注于数字认知的研究现状，以及这种新知识如何或可能有助于教育实践。当我们考虑与学习和教学有关的所有因素时，自然而然地，将数字认知研究作为发展教育和教育实践的重点是一个狭窄的观点。在图1中，我们展示了一个简化的影响图，以便将我们的问题在更广泛的上下文中处理。该图说明了整个主题作为研究领域的复杂性和多因素性。我们提供了一个简化的影响图，以便将我们的问题放在更广泛的上下文中处理。该图说明了整个主题作为研究领域的复杂性和多因素性。我们提供了一个简化的影响图，以便将我们的问题放在更广泛的上下文中处理。该图说明了整个主题作为研究领域的复杂性和多因素性。