Poster #74 - The Quality of Teacher-Child Interaction within Storybook Reading and Pre-K Mathematics Achievements in South Korea

• In Event: 1-005 - Poster Session 01
  In Poster Session: PS 01 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

A large body of literature indicates that the high-quality mathematics education during early childhood lay a strong foundation for future school achievement (Ginsburg, Lee, & Boyd, 2008; Duncan & Magnuson, 2011). A growing number of empirical studies suggest that fostering high- quality teacher-child interaction is related to early math achievement and later academic success (Hatfield, Burchinal, Pinata, & Sideris, 2016). Recently, a body of literature indicates that children’s storybook can be the vehicle for providing a meaningful context for learning the mathematical language (e.g., less, more, few) and critical mathematical concepts (Purpura, Napoli, Wehrspann & Gold, 2017). Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between the quality of teacher-child interaction during children’s storybook reading and math achievement in South Korea.

A total of 445 children (Mean age =59 months, SD=8.44) in 25 classrooms participated in this study (see Table 1). These classrooms were nested in 10 preschools, which is from four different provinces in South Korea. Children’s math achievements were assessed with Woodcock-Johnson III: Applied Problem, Counting Proficiency Assessment (Smith & Smith, 2011), and Brief Preschool Early Numeracy Skills Test, PENS-B (Purpura et al., 2015). As early literacy skills is a strong predictor of numeracy development (Purpura, Hume, Sims, & Lonigan, 2011), children’s vocabulary skills were measured by Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test; REVT, which is developed by Kim, Hong, & Kim, 2009).
Teacher-child interaction within storybook readings was video-taped over 100 times in 25 classrooms. First, program staff selected four children’s storybooks across four early childhood mathematical domains (1) number sense, (2) number of operations, (3) geometry, and (4) measurement. Then, 25 lead teachers were provided with the guideline that included sample questions to ask, comments to pose and ideas for facilitating a meaningful small-group activity. The teacher-child interaction was analyzed by six trained observers after inter-rater reliability was obtained. Finally, each of the video segments was coded by (a) the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS Pre-K) and (b) the Classroom Observation of Early Mathematics-Environment and Teaching (COEMET).

The preliminary results of bivariate correlations among main variables (see Table 2) indicated that a children’s math achievements were positively associated with children’s vocabularies skills. Demographic variables such as age and family income have a strong correlation with children’s math achievements and vocabulary skills. After completing the video coding on teacher-child interaction in the fall of 2018, multilevel modeling will be employed to predict math achievement as a function of child-level and classroom variables using Mplus 7 (Muthen & Muthen, 2012). The child-level variables include children’s sex, monthly age, expressive and receptive vocabulary scores, parental income, parental education, while classroom-level predictors comprises preschool locale (e.g., urban, rural), average preschool income, teacher qualification, years of teaching experiences, teachers’ beliefs, attitude on mathematics, and the teacher-child interaction measured by CLASS Pre-k and COEMET.

Author

• Haesung Im, Duksung Women's University
  Presenting Author