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4 Developmental Variation, Sociocultural Influences, and Difficulties in Mathematics
Pages 95-120

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From page 95...
... . This chapter describes the kinds of differences that exist and reviews what is known about the nature and sources of developmental variations among children.
From page 96...
... Socioeconomic Status Mathematical skills of young children from low-income families lag behind those of their middle-income peers. Preschoolers who attend Head Start Programs perform significantly below children who attend preschools serving middle-income children on standardized tests of mathematical readiness (Ehrlich and Levine, 2007)
From page 97...
... For instance, 2- to 3-yearolds were more exact in their ability to match small set sizes when they have better knowledge of the cardinal meanings of number words. Although low-income children performed worse than middle-income children on such numerosity matching tasks, this difference was eliminated if answers that were plus or minus 1 from the correct answer were counted as correct
From page 98...
... . Compounding the situation, public preschool programs serving low-income families tend to provide fewer learning opportunities and supports for mathematical development than ones serving middle-income families (Clements and Sarama, 2008)
From page 99...
... . Parents' spatial language may be more important for girls than for boys; use of such language by parents related to mental transformation performance of girls but not of boys (Cannon, Levine, and Huttenlocher, 2007)
From page 100...
... English Language Learners Surprisingly little research has examined the mathematics performance of English language learners. Findings for other subject areas show that children who have limited proficiency in English perform more poorly than their native English-speaking peers in other academic subjects (McKeon, 2005)
From page 101...
... However, with the growing number of ELL in the student population, it vital that more attention be paid to the relationship between language status and early mathematics learning so that early childhood education can effectively accommodate and support these children. INFLUENCE OF CONTEXT AND EXPERIENCE As noted in the previous section, research has identified consistent, average differences in mathematics competence and performance depending on membership in a particular social group.
From page 102...
... found that mothers thought it was more important that their children learn daily living skills and develop language skills in preschool than that their children learn mathematical skills. Most mothers in the study reported they themselves spent more time teaching their children language skills than mathematics skills at home.
From page 103...
... Mothers in the study reported that both they and their children had a high level of interest in number play, but middle-income children performed better than low-income children on both the cardinality and arithmetic tasks. There are numerous opportunities on a daily basis for children and families to explore mathematical terms and concepts.
From page 104...
... than the children actually displayed. Differences in Children's Experiences and Learning Opportunities as a Function of Socioeconomic Status Evidence suggests that SES differences in children's mathematics competence are linked to parallel differences in experiences provided in the home.
From page 105...
... , in a study of board game activities, found that, although 80 percent of middle-class preschool-age children reported playing one or more board games outside preschool, only 47 percent of Head Start children did so. However, such board games could easily be made and used at home.
From page 106...
... For example, several recent studies have shown that characteristics of speakers' language influence the quantitative skills of children and adults. One set of studies provides evidence that variations in the structure of a morphological marker, which refers to a language element that identifies quantity in different languages, is associated with the age at which children learn the meaning of specific cardinal numbers.
From page 107...
... . Decade names in English and Spanish generally can be derived from the name for the corresponding unit value, with varying degrees of phonetic modification (e.g., "five" becomes "fif" in English as in fifty rather that fivety, "cinco" becomes "cincuenta" in Spanish)
From page 108...
... When first counting above twenty, U.S. preschoolers often produce idiosyncratic number names, indicating that they fail to understand the base-ten structure underlying larger number names, often counting "twenty-eight, twentynine, twenty-ten, twenty-eleven, twenty-twelve." This kind of mistake is extremely rare for Chinese children, indicating that the base-ten structure of number names is more accessible for learners of Chinese than it is for children learning to count in English.
From page 109...
... One area in which there may be conceptual consequences of these linguistic differences is in children's understanding of the base-ten principle that underlies the structure of Arabic numerals. This structure is a feature of a particular representational system rather than a fundamental mathematical fact, but it is a feature that is incorporated into many of the algorithms children learn for performing arithmetic and thus is a powerful concept in early mathematical development.
From page 110...
... report success with explicitly teaching low-SES urban first graders about the base-ten structure of numbers, with the result that their end-of-year arithmetic performance approximated that reported for East Asian children. LEARNING DISABILITIES IN MATHEMATICS Mathematics learning disabilities appear in 6 to 10 percent of the elementary school population (Barberisi et al., 2005)
From page 111...
... suggest that the nature of the mathematical deficits is similar for both groups, although children with the comorbid condition show lower performance overall. What differentiates children with a mathematics-only disability from those with combined mathematics and reading learning disabilities is that the former group performs better on word problems in mathematics, which depend on language comprehension as well as calculation facility.
From page 112...
... . Deficits in these can prevent children from benefiting from formal mathematics instruction when they enter school, regardless of whether they are associated with environmental disadvantages or with genuine learning differences or disabilities (Baroody and Rosu, 2006; Griffin, 2007)
From page 113...
... Playing games to help children master basic number, counting, and arithmetic concepts and skills has long been advocated by mathematics educators (e.g., Baroody, 1987; Ernest, 1986; Wynroth, 1986) -- a proposition that is supported by research (for reviews, see, e.g., Baroody, 1999; Bright, Harvey, and Wheeler, 1985)
From page 114...
... . Sex Differences in the Relation of Early Puzzle Play and Mental Transformation Skill.
From page 115...
... Paper presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development, Boston, MA. Ehrlich, S.B., Levine, S.C., and Goldin-Meadow, S
From page 116...
... . Educating English Language Learners.
From page 117...
... Learning Disabilities Research and Practice, 22(1)
From page 118...
... Christian (Eds.) , Educating English Language Learners: A Synthesis of Research Evidence.
From page 119...
... . Promoting broad and stable improvements in low income children's numerical knowledge through playing number board games.
From page 120...
... . Sociocultural Influences on Young Children's Mathematical Knowledge: Contemporary Perspectives on Mathematics in Early Childhood Education.


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