Impacts on Mathematics of an Intervention Synthesizing Early Mathematics and Make-Believe Play

• In Event: Efficacy of an Intervention Synthesizing Scaffolding Designed to Promote Self-Regulation With an Early Mathematics Curriculum

Abstract

Our hypothesis was that children in both intervention groups would outperform children from the control classrooms in mathematics. A further hypothesis was that the BB+SSR would outperform the BB group as well, because the newly-developed self-regulation competencies would support the learning of mathematics. However, an alternative hypothesis is that challenges in implementing the synthesized intervention would lead to lower performance on mathematics in the synthesized (BB+SSR) group than in the BB group (and a zero or even negative effect of BB + SSR compared with the control group). A different alternative hypothesis is that although both the BB and SSR components are beneficial, they are not synergistic, resulting in no difference between the BB+SSR and BB groups on mathematics.

The NSF-supported Building Blocks (BB) project produced a research-based math curriculum that addresses geometric and spatial ideas and skills and quantitative ideas and skills (mathematical building blocks). The approach of BB is finding the math in, and developing math from, children's activity (including children's building blocks). Funded by the NSF and IES, three RCT evaluations have documented BB’s positive effects on young children's math achievement (e.g., Clements & Sarama, 2007, 2008). Increasing math proficiency is important in that math proficiency has been associated with later school success generally (Duncan et al., 2007).

We measured students’ mathematical knowledge using the Tools for Early Assessment in Math (TEAM), which measures core mathematical abilities of students from age 3 to 8 years using an individual interview format, with standardized administration protocol, videotaping, coding and scoring procedures. Abilities are assessed according to theoretically- and empirically-based developmental trajectories. The 225 items are ordered by Rasch item difficulty.

Preliminary results (please see Exhibits 1 and 2 below) revealed that students in the BB+SR group did not outperform those in the BB or Control groups, and in fact once pretests are included, we expect to see that students in the group with only BB outperformed those in the other two research groups (i.e., results seem to support the second alternative hypothesis). The paper will explore possible reasons for these results, but we are considering whether the challenge of implementing and integrating two new curricula at once reduced the effectiveness of both curricula. In teacher surveys, teachers reported that they found it challenging to learn, implement, and integrate two new curricula simultaneously, even with the gradual introduction to the content (i.e., a year of “gentle introduction” to the curricula, “trying them out” before any child outcome data were collected). The paper will examine these challenges and implications for using these two programs together.

Authors

• Julie Sarama, University of Denver

• Fatih Unlu, Abt Associates Inc.

• Douglas H. Clements, University of Denver

• Carolyn J. Layzer, Abt Associates Inc.