Improving children's health and nutrition is of primary focus, but in a situation where twelve out of thirteen of the world's children survive until the age of one, governments and civil society are now focusing their policies on the psycho-social and cognitive development of children [1]. 

In a society and its education system that knows the values of literacy and numeracy in the early years of a child who is preparing for formal schooling, perhaps nothing is more important to parents and teachers than having children learn to read and operate on numbers well. We  are aware that a child’s interest in reading alphabets and numbers begins at a very early age, and that many children not only learn to read and develop pre number sense at an early age, but they do this in ways that differ from conventional ways that we as adults do [2-5].  

Operational Definition

In some dictionaries, "literacy" is defined as knowledge of the written language and numeracy is dealing with numbers. In others, these are defined as the state of having richness of knowledge - that is, cultural literacy and numeracy [6]. 

Cultural Literacy

Cultural literacy and numeracy involves more than one kind of literacy and numeracy, and that knowledge of the written language and number sense is one of them. In early childhood education, the cultural literacy and numeracy which can be clubbed under foundational skill involves broadly four things [7,8,9]:

• Developing the skills needed to preserve physical safety; this is physical development. 

• The skills needed to preserve mental health; this is emotional development. 

• The skills needed to co-exist in society; this is social development. 

• The skills needed to function optimally in society; this is cognitive development.

Cultural literacy and numeracy under physical development must include learning context of

• Health, nutrition and hygiene [10]

• Physical education in the sense of sport and movement. 

• Learning safety: road safety, keeping safe from strangers, the ability to behave in unusual situations. 

• Learning to preserve the quality of the environment. 

Cultural literacy and numeracy under Emotional Development must include learning context of

• A good self-image and a positive personal identity. 

• Independence [11].

• The ability to cope with challenges or frustration, failure, etc.

• The ability to enjoy achievement, to struggle for it and to give up when it is necessary.

Cultural literacy and numeracy under Social Development must include learning context of

• Norms of behavior [12].

• Developing self-control.

• Understanding the meaning of punishment, guilt and so on. 

• Finding one's place in society [13].

• Becoming accepted.

• Getting acquainted with others.

• Developing friendships.

• Learning both to lead and be led.

• Communications skills: personal and interpersonal communication, verbal and non-verbal communication, understanding media and mass communication [14-19].

Cultural literacy and numeracy under Cognitive Development must includes learning context of

• Ideas of sounds.

• Ideas of sign and symbols.

• Structures of oral and written expression 

• Local context of dialect and its relationship with objects.

The Literacy and Numeracy in the written language of alphabets and numerals doesn't only mean knowing to read and write but also to comprehend culturally. This means understanding the contextual uses of the written language through alphabets and numerals. We may not teach writing in the foundational stage, but we do expose the children to the written language. This is a process that begins even before this stage. 

Research Base

Cultural considerations in Literacy and numeracy Development [20].

Piaget

• Infant’s schemata developed by responding to his environment (sensory) and those around him

• Children create own knowledge by forming and reforming concepts in their minds

• Child’s view of the world changes and is different from adults’, thus, their concepts about reading and writing are different from adults’ concepts about them

• Concepts of reading/writing are shaped by what they learned in  previous developmental stages, not necessarily by imitating adults

Vygotsky

• Learning takes place in a social context

• Language comes out of a need to communicate with others

• Language and cognition emerge at the same time

• Learning is a matter of internalizing language and actions of others

• Family, social, and cultural contexts support learning to read, speak, and write

Heath, Teale, Morrow, Strickland and Taylor 

Early literacy experiences in the home can have an impact on the child’s development as a reader and writer in school; storybook reading and talking about pictures, words; writing for real purposes modeled by caregivers, parents, older siblings, etc.

Rationale of understanding the cultural context of foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) and its educational perspectives

Knowledge of the written language in particular literary and numerical symbols is part of cultural literacy in its broad sense. The acquisition of literacy and numeracy as knowledge of written language of meaning words and numbers begins very early, and it includes three factors

Information about the written language of meaningful words and numbers 

Knowledge about the uses of written language and where it can be found, about reading and books, and about writing and its features. This knowledge is acquired a longtime before the child learns to actually read or write [21-25].

Dispositions towards what is read

Curiosity about written material, interesting what is told from books, the preference for some books over others, and the enjoyment of them. These dispositions, too, are acquired very early.

Skills related to the decoding of what is written 

The technical acquisition of reading and writing - develop gradually. They include phonological knowledge and the ability to make visual and oral distinctions, which are the basis for the formal teaching of reading and writing.

So in these instances and circumstances and with these research bases we can say that quality education of foundational literacy and numeracy for children can lay a strong foundation of all  round and holistic development of child and school systems and could be able to attract and sustain the interest of children in school and schooling.

Implementation plans and strategies to develop numeracy and literacy

Fun and Meaningfulness of Experiences 

Fun and Meaningfulness is an important component of numeracy and literacy - the child must enjoy dealing with the written language. This begins very early, from the time the small child brings a book to his parent and wants him to do something with it. The children knew how to read. But we had achieved nothing. Because if the citizen does not use the written language for his own enjoyment or knowledge; what is the point of teaching reading? Our job in educating for literacy is not only to make literature available to children, but to make them enjoy that literature. They must understand the importance of written language and enjoy it. Once that is accomplished, the formal reading and writing come very easily. Van Oers, H. J. M. (2003). lays importance of learning resources in the context of play and promoting effective learning in early childhood. 

Free and Fearless Environment of Learning

The curriculum delivery where teachers assume they are the owner of a body of knowledge that must be transferred to the children is not a good attitude of teaching. Instead children are given the mantle of the expert and encouraged to explore freely and without fear in an arena where they feel totally in control. The flow is not teacher to child or knowledge base to empty vessels. The key principle underlying this philosophy is that children don’t come to lessons empty but bring with them a rich source of numeracy and literary concepts that teachers can draw out and build upon. “The wise teacher does not ask you to enter the house of his wisdom. He leads you to the threshold of your mind” (Kahil Gibran) [26].

Matching Pedagogies 

The teaching style at this stage requires teachers to develop not only a new mindset but also a greater level of higher order teaching skills. Eccentric style of teaching is relatively straightforward in the sense that as long as classroom has an environment of controlled information can be readily imparted to children whilst learner will passively seek to swallow the knowledge that is merely transferred [27]. An emergent teaching style and classroom culture requires teachers to make facility decisions with regard to the direction of the lesson at any given moment. For this to operate successfully they must have a rich pedagogical knowledge base in any given curriculum area. They must respire and aspire opportunities for learning as they arise and develop high quality questioning skills not only to challenge the more able, independent and self-assured children but also to draw out the opinions of the less confident child. The success of this style of teaching rests on the teacher’s ability to create a classroom culture where children feel able to take risks without fear of comparison and competition and where making mistakes is seen as a necessary part of the learning process. D. B. El'konin is one of the Soviet Union's most prominent developmental psychologists who is carrying out an ambitious experimental program of curriculum innovation and he focused on the theoretical problems of child development [28-30].

Respecting Child Head and Heart 

Numeracy and literacy stems from the truth that the best teaching comes from a simple philosophy that no child comes to a lesson “empty”. All children have an inherent literal and numerical knowledge of sorts upon which it is possible to build. Let us try getting two preschool children to share some candies between them and you will soon find out they have a well developed knowledge of division and comprehension. In this common sense we are able to build on concepts and ideas that are already well rooted within a child’s own thinking [31,32]. This style of teaching is completely opposed to the disconnected teaching modes where the information flow is one way from teacher to pupil and the child is left to make sense of the teacher’s methods rather than developing their own. In the past this approach has often led to a situation where a child may understand what they have to do but not necessarily understand what they are doing [33-38].

Print Rich Environment 

If we Spelt out in very simple practical terms this may mean that whereas in the past we “taught” children decomposition when we felt they are ready and able to grasp the concept by their own, now we would also provide them the situation depicting problem around in print rich environments and ask them using their own previous knowledge how they might solve any given equation of information and knowledge. In practice this results in both a richness and variety of strategies that the children can use as they look for solutions to the problems the teacher sets for them [39,40].

Universal Learning Designs and Lesson Plans

Many “emergent numeracy and literacy” lesson designs will begin with an open-ended task that allows children to simply explore and play with patterns within numbers and pictures with words. As children present their own thoughts and ideas, the teacher has access to many points of learning, but importantly they come from children and are therefore fully embedded in the child's own thinking. The teacher can choose one of these and either consolidate the learning objective from a single digit or literacy strategy, or expand or build the class's own thinking by taking the concept a step further.

The essential thing for both teacher and child is to ask questions in a learning progression lesson design. The teacher wants to solve the questions that will prompt the child to think deeper. Whereas the child should rely not on open questions, but on questions that enhance comprehension and further their investigation.

The salient features of such lesson plans are that objectives, prerequisites and admissions behaviors are not necessarily determined by the classroom teacher. The teacher is providing an open-ended activity that all children can use as a starting point for words and number meanings at their level. Literacy and numeracy are "emerging" from children's own work.

Teach to Facilitate 

Fundamental to the whole process of facilitation in learning is the fact that the children are in control of the learning up until the point where the teacher may extend their thinking. The activity poses no threat, treats them as a fully-fledged mathematician and linguist and allows them to learn through their own learning style and thought processes. The art of facility teaching is to gauge where and when to intervene to build on the children’s own thinking. “Excessive intervention is a major error” (Karen Murris).

Co Teaching And Co Learning Flow

The learning flow is from the child to the teacher where the child is demonstrating the concepts in which they feel safe, challenged to extend these ideas to new areas of learning and where in the end, through strategic intervention, a teacher will help the children. One can expand that thinking by broadcasting and guiding. However this later stage should continue in the same emerging vein wherever possible. So this thinking that you are not up to the mark, now I'll explain you a superior way but this thinking must be molded like what if we had to? what would happen if? The basic nature of this teaching style is that the teacher is not meant to impart knowledge, but to present strategic questions and set the challenges that lead children to their thinking. The teacher can no longer be seen on juncture as a astute, but as a channel of facilitation.

Text Book Is Not Everything

It is obvious saying that this approach is against the frequent use of textbooks and worksheets because it sets the agenda set by the teacher (there are no textbooks in school here). The philosophy of emergent literacy and numeracy suggests that the objectives of any lesson will originate from children and in this sense, a flexible approach with respect to the consolidation of received concepts is necessary. This Helping in learning will establish a mindset that naturally leads to the learning objective and results within the learning and literacy strategy. Teachers can therefore establish an open-ended lesson design that focuses on the development of mental strategies in literacy and numeracy.

I Am the Owner

An essential element in the success of learning philosophy at this level is realizing the ability of children to learn, which in turn increases confidence and self-esteem in them. Now words and numbers seen as a secret part of knowledge are not assumed by the teacher. Instead, children can engage in rich mathematical and literary thinking, which has reached this level with the belief that, first, a wrong answer and only the ideas and concepts that are discovered and refined by their peers or by the teacher can go to help them in future courses of learning.

The skills that children are acquiring such as creating guesses and estimations, discussing ideas with others, integrating other people's ideas into their own thought processes are all common skills they should be transferred through any curriculum framework, and indeed, in life in general.

The thinking skills that the government is seeking to promote through the Curriculum documents are able to flourish naturally in this above discussion which could develop a facility driven environment. Here children must be able to build up inquisitive minds and are able to take their work forwards independently with the hand holding of the teacher, as they develop and build on their own mathematical and literary ideas. 

In this sense the current tendency towards literacy and numeracy is not full of meaning enough. Children need to be taken to a level where they fit into place where  first hand experiences  with concepts through “reading and writing creating and free expressions” could take place and where they are actively and attractively involved with Mathematical patterns and literary relationships and comprehensions. In this way learners will be able in setting their own schema for their learning. Through these independent learning processes they will emerge as true independent learners and the curriculum will gradually become “child determined” not “objective determined”. The evolving learning style starts with where the child is at and seeks to use the objectives of learning as hand holding to take a child forward in their own understanding. This is utterly contrasting to the current tendency of imposing teacher led objectives and rigid lesson planning upon children. 

Finally good sound teaching attitude is not bound within the restrictions of disconnected subject areas and self centered. If it is true that children learn more effectively through an emergent style of teaching then it should permeate all areas of the school’s curriculum. The school’s teaching and learning policy seeks to address these issues in a futuristic way keeping in mind the research bases. 

Declaration Note

• I confirm that I have no Conflict of Interest.

• I confirm that I have received approval from the relevant institutional ethics committee and that you have taken steps to protect your participants, ensuring that they were not disadvantaged and that the data have been anonymized.

Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. I confirm that I have taken steps to make my data (only tools used) available to others (wherever possible), through my email, or I will upload them on any platform under my testimonials.

Informed Consent

• Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

• Verbal informed consent was obtained before the interview.

Consent to Publish:

The authors affirm that human research participants provided informed consent for publication.

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