A team of Lynch School of Education and Human Development faculty has been awarded a $1.4-million grant from the U.S. Department of Education鈥檚 Institute of Education Sciences to study a new approach for improving mathematical learning and achievement among low-income students.
Marina Vasilyeva
The team, led by principal investigator Associate Professor Marina Vasilyeva and co-PIs Associate Professor Elida Laski and Professor Emeritus Beth Casey, will study a new approach for promoting advanced arithmetic strategies by using spatial representations of number magnitude. Both children鈥檚 number sense and use of advanced strategies for solving arithmetic problems are key predictors of future mathematics achievement and other learning outcomes.
The project, funded exclusively through the IES grant, will include more than 550 first graders from urban public schools, said Laski.
鈥淢athematical proficiency in elementary school is one of the strongest predictors of academic outcomes as late as high school,鈥� said Laski. 鈥淏ut as early as kindergarten, there are substantial gaps in math achievement between higher income and lower income students and these gaps only widen over time and continue to persist. Our aim is to target first graders at the beginning of their formal schooling in order to impact their learning over time.鈥�
The central focus of the project is to examine whether materials that contain spatial cues鈥攕uch as length鈥攈elp students better grasp the magnitude of numbers and use that information when solving arithmetic problems.
鈥淭here has been a lot of research into the underlying connections between spatial and mathematical reasoning,鈥� said Laski. 鈥淲hat we want to do is further explore this connection and, in particular, the possibility of capitalizing on it to improve students鈥� mathematical learning.鈥�
Mathematical proficiency in elementary school is one of the strongest predictors of academic outcomes as late as high school. But as early as kindergarten, there are substantial gaps in math achievement between higher income and lower income students and these gaps only widen over time and continue to persist.
The team has developed different kinds of materials鈥攕ome with spatial cues and some without鈥攖hat can be used as manipulatives when solving arithmetic problems.聽 They will test the effectiveness of these materials for teaching students to solve arithmetic problems using either a retrieval or a decomposition strategy that involves breaking problems into easier ones. In the last stage of the study, the team will test the most effective method against a control group of students who receive business-as-usual mathematics lessons.
The team members have focused on many of these issues throughout their careers.
The study 鈥渋s building on work that Elida, Beth, and I have done for years,鈥� Vasilyeva said. 鈥淭his is a timely project because there is a growing interest in the connection between spatial thinking and math learning, but what underlies that connection and how to harness it for improving math learning is still not well understood. It鈥檚 exciting to work on this project because it has clear implications for both psychological theory and educational practice.鈥�
Ed Hayward | University Communications | June 2020