Mathematical Activities in the Classroom Support Executive Function Development in Elementary School

• In Event: What Really Matters in Early Education Classrooms? Probing Classroom-Level and Individual Supports for Child Development

Abstract

Executive functions (EFs) are a set of higher-order cognitive skills which support the self-regulation of attention and behaviors (Diamond, 2013) and predict academic success (Morgan et al., 2019). There is evidence that EFs grow more during the school-year than summer months (Finch, 2019), suggesting that aspects of the classroom experience foster EF development. Broad measures of classroom quality, including emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional quality, have been linked to EF development (e.g., Hamre et al., 2014). While these studies provide information that classroom experiences matter for EF development, they do not provide any actionable information on which specific classroom activities benefit children’s EF development.

Mathematics activities are a clear target, given research suggesting bi-directional associations between mathematical skills and EFs (McKinnon & Blair, 2019). Conceptually, mathematics activities place significant demands on EFs by requiring children to hold and update information, switch between different procedures, and inhibit pre-potent responses (Clements et al., 2016). The current study leverages a nationally-representative sample (the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-2011; ECLS-K:2010) to identify which mathematical activities have the largest EF demands and then validate the link between the identified activities and EF growth. This study will focus on mathematical activities and EF growth during third grade when children transition into middle childhood, as more complex mathematical concepts are introduced, and children are expected to regulate their attention and behaviors more independently.

The ECLS-K:2010 includes approximately 18,170 children and well-validated direct assessments of children’s EFs. Teachers reported how many days each mathematical activity was covered in class and 15 academic experts rated whether each mathematical activity relied on EFs. As shown in Table 1, survey data were combined with the ECLS-K data to identify 11 mathematics skills which rely most heavily on EFs, based on both partial correlations with third grade EFs and expert opinion. These activities focused predominantly on applications of multiplication, fractions, and word problems. A composite measure of EF-supportive mathematical activities was created by averaging the numbers of days spent across the 11 activities.

We then examined whether these mathematics activities were associated with a composite measure of EFs (Numbers Reversed and Dimensional Change Card Sort) in spring of third grade. A set of stepwise multilevel regression analyses (Table 2) demonstrated that the EF-supportive mathematical activities were positively associated with EFs at the end of third grade, even after controlling for a lagged measure of EFs, time spent generally on mathematics, and a robust set of covariates.

With a newfound emphasis by school districts on measuring and tracking self-regulation skills (West et al., 2020), there is a strong need for information on how teachers can promote EFs through normal classroom activities. This study provides actionable information for educators by emphasizing the importance learning and applying multiplication, fractions, and word problems for the development of children’s EFs during third grade. Finding ways to embed these types of mathematics activities that help children practice and improve EFs will likely have long-term benefits for students’ self-regulation and mathematical skills.

Authors

• Jenna Elizabeth Finch, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Presenting Author

• Kimia Akhavein, University of Nebraska - Lincoln