The Screener for Early Number Sense: A Research-Based Screening Tool for Identifying Difficulties

• In Event: 2-024 - From the Lab to the Field: Using Early Math Development Research to Improve Educational Practice

Integrative Statement

Identifying math difficulties early in development is critical to providing effective interventions that promote readiness and school success in mathematics. Number sense performance and growth, in particular, are highly predictive of later math achievement, even when adjusting for reading, age, and general cognitive factors (e.g., Jordan et al., 2009). Thus, we developed the Screener for Early Number Sense (SENS) to help teachers identify children who may be at-risk for math difficulties and provide targeted instruction on specific number sense concepts.

The development of the SENS was informed by a research-based conceptual framework with the following assumptions : (1) Number sense can be operationalized as knowledge of number, number relations, and number operations; (2) Number sense can be measured along a developmental progression; (3) Number sense predicts future math success; (4) Core deficiencies in number sense underlie math difficulties; (5) Deficiencies in number sense can be reliably identified early; and (6) Number sense is malleable and early intervention leads to improved math achievement in school.

As early number competencies typically follow a developmental progression, three vertically-scaled forms of the SENS were developed for preK, K, and first grade (see Table 1). Furthermore, to maximize its usefulness for educators, the math content of the SENS was aligned with the Common Core State Standards in K and first grade (2010) as well as the Committee on Early Childhood Mathematics of the National Research Council (2009) in preK.

We employed a series of iterative procedures for creating, field-testing, analyzing, and selecting the items for the final three forms of the SENS. In this paper, we will provide an overview of the SENS as well as present findings from our psychometric study, which resulted in the final version of the instrument. Participants were 700 children from the three grade levels (see Table 2 for demographics). Children were assessed in their dominant language (English or Spanish), and EL children were tested by bilingual assessors to get the most accurate assessment of the children’s skill level. Using data from this field-test, various psychometric analyses were conducted, including classical item-level analysis, differential item functioning (DIF) analysis, factor analysis, and Rasch IRT analysis. Then we selected the best 70 items across the three grade-level forms. For the preK form, there are 20 unique items and 10 common items between preK and K. For the K form, there are 10 unique items, 10 common items between preK and K, and 10 common items between K and first grade. For the first grade form, there are 20 unique items and 10 common items between K and first grade. The internal consistency reliability was high for each form: 0.92 for preK, 0.94 for K, and 0.94 for first grade. Teacher focus groups were used to ensure usability of the SENS in classrooms. An online score report tool is being developed to assist teachers in interpreting individual children’s performance on the SENS overall, and on the three subdomains of the SENS. This tool will also suggest intervention activities based on children’s performance.

Authors

• Nancy Jordan, University of Delaware
  Presenting Author

• Alice Klein, West Ed
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kevin Huang, West Ed
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amber Beliakoff, West Ed
  Non-Presenting Author

• Brianna Devlin, University of Delaware
  Non-Presenting Author