Poster #45 - Effect of teacher expectations on preschool math skill development

• In Event: Poster Session 01

Abstract

Early math skills fundamental to school readiness and long-term academic outcomes. (Duncan, et al., 2007; Collins & Dennis, 2009), and teachers are important contributors to school readiness. Previous work has shown that teacher perceptions of children influence their academic outcome, and the amount of time and the frequency of daily math activities in preschool classrooms significantly correlates with key math skill development (Baker et al., 2010; Baker et al.,2015; Costa et al., 2021). However, there is limited research showing how teachers’ expectations about children’s math skills affects math achievement. As such, we examine whether teachers’ perceptions of the benchmarks students should achieve before kindergarten entry relate to gains in math achievement during preschool.
To address this question, we used a preliminary sample of 121 students nested in 15 classrooms from a larger intervention study with randomization to different treatment conditions at the level. Teachers were asked to indicate how important is it for children to reach 15 different benchmarks before entering kindergarten, four pertaining to mathematical skills (count to 10, count to 100, identify numerals, perform simple sums), four pertaining to language/literacy skills (recite the alphabet, recognize letters, write their own name, write letters), and the remaining seven items pertaining to self-regulatory skills. All responses were on a 1 to 5 Likert scale from “Not at all important” to “Extremely Important”. For the purposes of this investigation, only scores pertaining to mathematical benchmarks and language/literacy benchmarks were used. A mean score was computed across the four items in each category for analysis.
Preschool-aged children (M age = 4.46 years, SD = 0.30) completed the Preschool Early Numeracy Screener (PENS; Purpura, 2021) twice, approximately 8-9 weeks apart (M = 61.03 days, SD = 12.03). Intervention condition was used as a control variable since it is not of interest to this investigation; however, intervention condition was unassociated with change in math score over time. In addition, we controlled for teacher level of education, child sex, time between testing sessions, and child score on the PENS at time 1. Finally, to ensure specificity of associations, we also controlled for teacher ratings of language/literacy benchmarks.
We found a positive association between math benchmarks and change in PENS score from time 1 to time 2, b = 1.97, SE = .89, p = .026 as shown in Figure 1, whereas there was no association between language and literacy benchmarks and change in PENS score. The higher expectations teachers have for children’s math skills before school entry, the better children will develop early math skills. At presentation time, mechanisms underlying this association (e.g., math anxiety, time spent doing mathematical activities) will be explore. As data collection is ongoing, data from a larger sample will be available at the time of presentation.

Authors

• Lucia Huerga, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Andrew Ribner, University of Pittsburgh

• Taylor Casteel

• Melissa E Libertus, University of Pittsburgh