The Effect of Dialogic Inquiry During Guided Play on Young Children’s Numerical Knowledge

• In Event: 3-220 - The Darndest Questions: The Role of Questioning in Children’s Learning

Integrative Statement

Children learn best in active, engaged, meaningful, and socially interactive environments (Chi, 2009; Zosh et al., 2016), such as guided play settings (Weisberg et al., 2013). One mechanism, which likely promotes active, engaged, meaningful, and socially interactive learning during guided play is dialogic inquiry (Ash & Wells, 2006; Fisher et al., 2013). Dialogic inquiry is the practice of asking questions that lead children to think differently about the concepts at hand or act differently on the objects in their environments. The present study is the first to experimentally test the effect of dialogic inquiry in a guided play setting on young children’s early numerical knowledge. Early numerical understanding was selected as an outcome because it lays the foundation for later mathematics achievement, career advancement, and daily functioning (National Research Council, 2001), however, only 40% of 4th graders in the United States score Proficient or higher on national standardized tests of mathematics (Department of Education, 2015). For these reasons, it is crucial to explore evidence-based ways to improve young children’s numerical knowledge.

Ninety-four 3- to 5-year-old preschoolers (Mage=52 months; 51% female) from diverse backgrounds played a life-sized 1-10 linear number board game (adapted from Ramani & Siegler, 2008; Figure 1) one-on-one with an experimenter over the course of two five min sessions. During the guided play activity, experimenters and children took turns spinning a spinner (Figure 1) to try to reach space 10 first. All children were encouraged to pretend they were racing on a playground to their favorite apparatus (e.g.,monkey bars). Two experimenters blind to the hypothesis of the study conducted the game play sessions. Children were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: dialogic inquiry, mathematical statements, or positive encouragement. Children in the dialogic inquiry condition were asked questions by the experimenter with the aim of helping the child discover mathematical concepts while playing the game (e.g.,“How many spaces ahead of me are you?”). Children in the mathematical statements condition were given mathematical information related to the game in the form of statements (e.g., “You are two spaces ahead of me!”). Children in the positive encouragement condition were not given or asked about any mathematical information. Instead, they heard an parallel number of encouraging, game-related questions and statements (e.g.,“Let’s hope you get a good spin!”). Experimenters blind to the hypothesis of the study and participant condition also administered a pretest prior to game play and posttest following game play, measuring numerical knowledge of number line estimation, magnitude comparison, arithmetic, and ordinality.

Preliminary analyses show that there were no significant differences in child age, gender, family income-to-needs ratio, number of games played or won, time between sessions, time spent playing the game, or experimenter talkativeness between conditions. Primary analyses indicate that children in the dialogic inquiry condition improved more than children in the mathematical statements and positive encouragement conditions on arithmetic (p<.001) and magnitude comparison (p<.05) performance (Figure 2). Results will be discussed in terms of the role of dialogic inquiry in a guided play setting in improving children’s learning.

Authors

• Emily N Daubert, Rutgers University - Newark
  Presenting Author

• Geetha Ramani, University of Maryland
  Non-Presenting Author