Why Math Might Be The Secret To School Success

Little children are big news this month, as the White House holds a summit on early childhood education on Wednesday. The president wants every 4-year-old to go to preschool, but the new Congress is unlikely to foot that bill.

Since last year, more than 30 states have expanded access to preschool. But there's still a lack of evidence about exactly what kinds of interventions are most effective in those crucial early years.

In New York City, an ambitious, $25 million study is collecting evidence on the best way to raise outcomes for kids in poverty. Their hunch is that it may begin with math.

Time That Counts

"One! Two! Three! Four! Five!"

Gayle Conigliaro's preschool students are jumping as they count, to get the feeling of the numbers into their bodies — a concept called "embodied cognition."

Read more from NPR...

Teaching Math to Young Children: New IES Practice Guide

Despite young children's natural interest in mathematics, teaching the subject to young children remains an understandable challenge. A new practice guide addresses this issue, providing a series of "evidence-based recommendations" to help guide the teaching of children ages 3 to 6.

The latest What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) practice guide, Teaching Math to Young Children, was funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences. Educators and other experts in the field created a list of five recommendations using a combination of evidence-based research and professional guidance on best practices for teaching math in preschool, prekindergarten, and kindergarten settings. They include:

1. Teach number and operations using a developmental progression;
2. Teach geometry, patterns, measurement, and data analysis using a developmental progression;
3. Use progress monitoring to ensure that math instruction builds on what each child knows;
4. Teach children to view and describe their world mathematically; and
5. Dedicate time each day to teaching math, and integrate math instruction throughout the school day.

According to the publication, the recommendations are "designed to capitalize on children's natural interest in math to make their preschool and school experience more engaging and beneficial." 

Each recommendation includes with it an overview of the supporting evidence. The publication labels the strength of the evidence as "strong," "moderate," or "minimal." These labels are based on a variety of factors, including validity, effects on outcomes, the strength of the relationship between the evidence and recommendations, and the panel's confidence in the effectiveness of the practice. Of the five recommendations listed above, it's worth noting that none received the "strong" label, and only one (the first item) got a "moderate" label.

Step-by-step instructions are included for carrying out each of the recommendations. The guide also identifies potential roadblocks and ways to overcome such obstacles.

re-posted from Education Week

Research: Math Anxiety Starts Young

Math anxiety begins young, with students showing signs of it as early as first and second grade, a University of Chicago researcher says.

Sian Beilock said the youngsters whose school work is hurt the most by math anxiety tend to be the highest achievers. That's because anxiety disrupts working memory, which is typically strongest in those students.
"You can think of working memory as a kind of 'mental scratchpad' that allows us to 'work' with whatever information is temporarily flowing through consciousness," Beilock said. "It's especially important when we have to do a math problem and juggle numbers in our head. Working memory is one of the major building blocks of IQ."
Beilock and three colleagues are the authors of "Math Anxiety, Working Memory and Math Achievement in Early Elementary School," previewed on the website of the Journal of Cognition and Development.
The team found that less adept students tend to deal with arithmetic in other ways than working memory, like counting on their fingers. But they found math anxiety can put students who do depend on working memory as much as a half-year behind those without it.
The study involved 88 first-graders and 66 second-graders in a big-city school system. The team found about half of high-achieving students suffer from math anxiety.
The researchers suggest ways of dealing with math anxiety, including having students write about it before they have to deal with arithmetic.

Reposted

Early Predictors of High School Mathematics Achievement: Fractions and division

Repost

Mastery of fractions and early division is a predictor of students' later success with algebra and other higher-level mathematics, based on a study done by a team of researchers led by a Carnegie Mellon University professor.

That means more effective teaching of the concepts is needed to improve math scores among U.S. high school students, which have remained stagnant for more than 30 years.

The study, called "Early Predictors of High School Mathematics Achievement," was published recently in Psychological Science, and the lead researcher was Robert Siegler, a professor of cognitive psychology at CMU whose work focuses on children's mathematical and scientific thinking.

"This has really important policy implications. Everyone is aware that overall U.S. math achievement isn't very good in relative terms or compared to other parts of the world. But there has been disagreement on what we need to focus on in math education," Mr. Siegler said. "This shows we really need to focus on whole number division and fractions and teaching them better than we are currently doing."

Mr. Siegler said the changes in math education need to take place at the universities that train teachers, in professional development programs for current math teachers and in the elementary classrooms where students are learning fractions and early division concepts.

The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Education and National Science Foundation, noted that math scores on national standardized tests among U.S. high school students have not improved in three decades and are significantly behind those in countries such as China, Japan, Finland, the Netherlands and Canada at a time when math proficiency is a requirement for many jobs.

It also noted that students who "start ahead in math generally stay ahead" and that those who "start behind generally stay behind" and it looked to find the reason.

Mr. Siegler's team of eight researchers hypothesized that 10-year-olds' knowledge of fractions would predict their algebra knowledge and overall mathematics achievement at age 16, even after statistically controlling for other factors such as general intellectual ability and family income and education.

The hypothesis came from earlier work that Mr. Siegler did in 2006-08 as a member of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, which suspected a link between fractions mastery and success in algebra and other higher level math courses.

The research team set out to examine mathematical knowledge in students from fifth grade through high school. It used two previous studies, one from the United Kingdom that provided a sample of 3,677 children born in the U.K. in a single week in 1970 and one from the United States that provided a sample of 599 children.

The children in the U.K. study were tested in 1980 when they were 10 and again in 1986 when they were 16. The U.S. children were tested in 1997, when they were 10 to 12 years old and again in 2002, when they were 15-17.

In the U.K. data, fractions knowledge at age 10 was the strongest math predictor of algebra knowledge at age 16 and overall math achievement. Results were similar in the U.S. data.

The study said a likely reason for U.S. students' weakness in fractions and division could be linked to their teachers' "lack of a firm conceptual understanding" of the concepts, citing several other studies in which many American teachers were unable to explain the reasons behind mathematical solutions, while most teachers in Japan and China were able to offer two or three explanations.

"Any effort to improve the children's understanding without improving the teacher's understanding is doomed to fail," Mr. Siegler said.

He said one change that could be made at the university level would be to have elementary math teachers focus more on courses that will help them to understand elementary math rather than requiring them to take high-level math courses that don't apply to elementary school.

Mr. Siegler said he expects the study's funders to promote the changes.

Rob Ochsendorf, program officer for special education research at the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Special Education Research, said of the study: "The results provide important cues to educators and researchers regarding the skills that are ripe for intervention in order to improve overall mathematics in the U.S."

REL-Midwest report on Michigan's implementation and support of RtI

Regional Educational Laboratories (REL) - Midwest just released a report that reviews 6 mid-west states' implementation and support of Response to Intervention (RTI). Michigan is one of these states.
Based on a review of state documents and interviews with state and local officials in six Midwest Region states, this qualitative study describes state education agency policy development and planning for response to intervention approaches to instruction. It also looks at the support provided to districts and schools implementing response to intervention.

Curious about how Michigan compares? Check out the report to find out.