This study focuses on adults who are neither preschool teachers nor professional caregivers and investigates their beliefs regarding the importance of engaging young children with numerical activities. It also examines the types of numerical activities adults report having observed children engaging with, as well as the types of activities they propose as a way for promoting counting, enumerating, recognizing number symbols, and number composition and decomposition. Findings showed that participants believed to a great extent that engaging young children with numerical activities is important. Most reported that they had observed children engaging with at least some numerical activity. In general, participants relayed more activities and more detailed activities when suggesting activities for each competency, than they did when reporting observed activities. Findings also suggested a need to enhance adults’ knowledge regarding the necessity to promote verbal counting, separate from object counting, as well as to increase adults’ awareness of number composition and decomposition. For mathematics educators wishing to plan workshops for adults, this study offers a method for investigating adults’ knowledge of early numerical activities, as well as a starting point with which to plan appropriate workshops.

本研究关注既不是学前教师也不是专业照顾者的成年人，并调查他们对让幼儿参与数字活动的重要性的信念。它还检查了成年人报告的观察到儿童参与的数字活动的类型，以及他们提出的作为促进计数、枚举、识别数字符号以及数字组成和分解的一种方式的活动类型。调查结果表明，参与者在很大程度上认为让幼儿参与数字活动很重要。大多数人报告说，他们观察到儿童至少参与了一些数字活动。一般来说，参与者在为每个能力提出活动建议时，会转达更多的活动和更详细的活动，比他们在报告观察到的活动时所做的还要多。调查结果还表明，需要提高成年人对促进口头计数的必要性的认识，将其与物体计数分开，并提高成年人对数字组成和分解的认识。对于希望为成人计​​划工作坊的数学教育工作者，本研究提供了一种调查成人对早期数字活动知识的方法，以及计划适当工作坊的起点。