This paper was the first to report on the eight categories of FoNS. Its main focus was to demonstrate the cross-cultural relevance of the framework by summarising the findings of the three pilot studies. The first of these involved the teaching of sequences in England and Hungary, the second involved the development of children’s conceptual subitising in Hungary and Sweden and the third addressed teachers’ use of the number line in Poland and Russia. In addition to confirming its relevance as a tool for analysing classroom practice, the study showed that the FoNS framework has the potential to inform the practices of teacher education for elementary teachers.
The framework’s simple structure is thought to make it an excellent suitable starting point for students’ professional learning, particularly from the perspective of practicum-related planning and teaching. It can also be used as a simple assessment tool for provoking post lesson discussion. The details of each examined episode can be seen in the table, highlighting those FoNS categories that are emphasised regularly cross-culturally and those, like estimation and quantity discrimination, that seem rare. The table also includes the average (mean) number of codes identified per episode for each teacher. In this respect, there is considerable variation between the FoNS-related emphases of teachers from different countries even when teaching the same topic.