Anna Shusterman - US grants

The proposed five-year project seeks to investigate the connections between symbolic and nonsymbolic representations of number and the role of language in facilitating the transformation from approximate number sense to exact numerical systems in 3- to 5-year old children. The basic research question is as follows: Do developments in symbolic and non-symbolic number systems occur in tandem during the preschool years? Both systems of numerical representation are dynamically changing during this period of early childhood, but the extent to which these developments are correlated and the underlying mechanisms that bind them are currently not known. The following three lines of studies will be investigated: (1) Correlational analysis of symbolic and non-symbolic number representations in preschoolers; (2) Developmental account of numbers in oral-deaf children, and; (3) Developmental account of attentional shifts from objects to sets in young children. Various empirical tests with hypotheses will be conducted annually, including a longitudinal study in the case of study (1). The proposed educational activities include: (1) annual workshops for teachers on number development for both early childhood educators and educators of the deaf; (2) summer fellowship program for undergraduate students; (3) development and teaching of a capstone course at a preschool for the deaf, and; identification of mechanisms to further evaluate and disseminate preschool mathematics programs for deaf to hard-of-hearing children. It is important to know whether deaf children are delayed on preschool-level math skills, because such a delay could entrench otherwise bright children on a path away from optimal mathematical learning in school and other contexts. This knowledge can directly translate into interventions that reduce the well-documented achievement gap between deaf and hearing students in STEM disciplines.

The proposed project will impact STEM education by advancing our knowledge of the foundations of mathematical learning before children enter formal educational settings. The studies will advance our understanding of: (1) how preschool children acquire number concepts; (2) what role language plays in the development of number concepts, and; (3) how language delays impact the development of number concepts. More broadly, the project investigates how symbolic systems (like language) interact with non-symbolic systems (like quantity representations) over the course of development. In addition, this work will provide a much needed analysis of number development in young deaf or hard-of-hearing children because studies of numeracy in the deaf rarely extend to the preschool ages. The proposed work will provide us with a better understanding of conceptual development of number in young children, which hopefully will contribute to the development of appropriate and effective preschool curricula to support future mathematical learning. The proposed project also includes participation by undergraduate researchers and collaborations with early childhood teachers and practitioners.

This project, to be conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and Wesleyan University, will study how children between ages 1 and 4 learn number words, the basic building blocks of mathematical learning. The main research question will be how the grammar of a child's native language affects number word learning, leading to earlier or later progress in math. The project will compare different languages (English, Arabic, and Slovenian) that have different grammatical rules for expressions about numbers. This work will help improve understanding of how early language exposure fosters learning about numbers and math. This project will advance the work of the REAL (Research on Education and Learning) program in studying the cognitive basis of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) learning.

The project will compare English, Arabic, and two dialects of Slovenian, which vary in terms of grammatical marking for numbers. The research will investigate a syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis in which finer grammatical distinctions support earlier learning. The project will use various age-appropriate measures of number word learning, including looking time, set creation counting, and matching.

Math games and play engage young children?s interest in patterns, numbers and logic. In preschools, there is a critical need for math instruction and learning. Early childhood is an important point for children to learn about mathematics. Children's play-based activities provide natural opportunities for them to explore and learn math topics. This project explores how teachers can use activities with young children to develop their knowledge of numbers and patterns. Part of the study examines how much guidance teachers should provide to students. The project also explores the design of resources that are the most likely to be used by preschool teachers and that can be easily incorporated into their teaching of young children. The study of the use of play-based mathematics activities will support critical early learning of number concepts.

This project will investigate the implementation and efficacy of the preschool math games for mathematics learning. The research would study the materials as used in classrooms by teachers in order to understand how the materials improve early numeracy skills, and whether children?s improvement is affected by how the activities are implemented in the classroom. The research questions for the study examine the role of the teacher in providing guidance to children when engaging in the numeracy activities and how the materials influence children?s early numeracy skills. The study employs an experimental design to study different implementation pathways. The design would examine the impact of two different instructor types and two levels of guidance for the preschool students when using the activities. Data collected will include measures of children?s mathematical knowledge and teachers? pedagogical self-efficacy and content knowledge.

The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics by preK-12 students and teachers, through the research and development of new innovations and approaches. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for the projects.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.