Longitudinally adaptive assessment and instruction increase numerical skills of preschool children
| Autor: | Stephen W. Raudenbush, Janet Eisenband Sorkin, Cristina Carrazza, Susan C. Levine, Alana Foley, Marc W. Hernandez, Debbie Leslie, Susan Goldin-Meadow |
|---|---|
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Male
preschool instruction Control (management) education Social Sciences Affect (psychology) behavioral disciplines and activities 050105 experimental psychology Education Intervention (counseling) Mathematical skill randomized control trials Mathematics education Humans Learning 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Social inequality Verbal comprehension Students Adaptive assessment adaptive assessment Multidisciplinary social inequality Schools Teaching 05 social sciences Mathematical Concepts mathematics education Aptitude Tests Child Preschool Psychological and Cognitive Sciences Female Educational Measurement Psychology Spatial skills Comprehension 050104 developmental & child psychology |
| Zdroj: | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
| ISSN: | 1091-6490 0027-8424 |
| Popis: | Significance Socioeconomic disparities in math proficiency are observable when children enter kindergarten, and these disparities persist through the school years. Research suggests that overall proficiency at kindergarten entry depends upon specific skills that all normally developing children age 3 to 5 y can learn. We therefore designed a procedure that enables teachers to assess the skills of each child and tailor instruction to child-specific levels of skill. The procedure is iterative: Assess, teach, reassess, and teach, with three assessments per school year. We found that children in classrooms randomly assigned to this procedure gained substantially more in their numerical proficiency than did children in control classrooms. The program did not delay growth in print literacy and increased verbal proficiency. Social inequality in mathematical skill is apparent at kindergarten entry and persists during elementary school. To level the playing field, we trained teachers to assess children’s numerical and spatial skills every 10 wk. Each assessment provided teachers with information about a child’s growth trajectory on each skill, information designed to help them evaluate their students' progress, reflect on past instruction, and strategize for the next phase of instruction. A key constraint is that teachers have limited time to assess individual students. To maximize the information provided by an assessment, we adapted the difficulty of each assessment based on each child’s age and accumulated evidence about the child’s skills. Children in classrooms of 24 trained teachers scored 0.29 SD higher on numerical skills at posttest than children in 25 randomly assigned control classrooms (P = 0.005). We observed no effect on spatial skills. The intervention also positively influenced children’s verbal comprehension skills (0.28 SD higher at posttest, P < 0.001), but did not affect their print-literacy skills. We consider the potential contribution of this approach, in combination with similar regimes of assessment and instruction in elementary schools, to the reduction of social inequality in numerical skill and discuss possible explanations for the absence of an effect on spatial skills. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|