Even though students’ success in mathematics can be detected by the time they start school, intervention is often too late and not well-targeted. It should happen earlier — and more effectively — a new Centre for Independent Studies paper outlines.
Author Professor David C Geary says scientific evidence reveals there are identifiable foundational skills that predict students’ later outcomes.
In Setting the preschool foundation for success in mathematics, Prof Geary finds that the earlier children become ‘cardinal principle knowers’, the better they perform at school.
The results outlined in the paper come from a four-year longitudinal study — including two years of preschool (age 4 years), kindergarten, and first grade — designed to identify the early quantitative competencies that predict readiness to learn mathematics.
“Cardinal principle knowledge is about children’s ability to match the numbers that they know to a unique quantity and to relate these quantities in sequences,” Prof Geary said.
“While many children are able to count with ease at pre-school age, not all are successful in translating those numbers to discrete quantities.”
Prof Geary says a good test of cardinal knowledge is when children are asked to ‘give an object’. As the number of objects varies, children can have difficulty finding and presenting the correct quantity of objects.
“While most children develop this ability by the end of kindergarten, having the skills earlier results in easier acquisition of other foundational skills,” he said.
“Around half of the difference in students’ mathematics achievement in school is predicted by their cardinal knowledge before starting school.”
Prof Geary says the risk of long-term difficulties with mathematics — or at least starting school significantly behind peers in fundamental numerical knowledge — can be determined by 3½ to 4 years of age.
While Australian children receive some assessment of their basic early development in the first year of formal schooling (when they are typically aged 5 or 6), this is not consistently reinforced with school- and home-based interventions to address learning gaps.
Prof Geary calls for early interventions that target parent-child number-related activities, preschool experiences, and child-centred factors (such as those to promote better attentive behaviour in classroom settings).
David C Geary is Curators’ Professor and Thomas Jefferson Fellow in the Department of Psychological Sciences and Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at the University of Missouri. He is author of the analysis paper, Setting the preschool foundation for success in mathematics. Geary is among the world’s foremost experts on cognition and evolutionary psychology.