Mature number sense predicts middle school students’ mathematics achievement

• Autores: Sean D. Kirkland, Claire Guang, Ying Cheng, Nicole M. McNeil
• Localización: Journal of educational psychology, ISSN-e 1939-2176, ISSN 0022-0663, Vol. 116, Nº. 8, 2024, págs. 1404-1420
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Students with mature number sense “make sense” of numbers and operations, use reasoning to notice patterns, and flexibly select the most effective and efficient problem-solving strategies (McIntosh et al., 1997; R. Reys et al., 1999; Yang, 2005). Although national standards and policy documents (e.g., CCSS, 2010; NCTM, 2000, 2014) emphasize the importance of number sense, limited research exists on the association between students’ mature number sense and other important psychological constructs in mathematics education, such as grade-level mathematics achievement. The present study addressed this gap through a longitudinal design, advancing fundamental knowledge of number sense as a construct. At the start of the school year, middle school students (N = 129 at Time Point 1) completed measures of mature number sense and several related constructs, including grade-level mathematics achievement, executive functioning, and fraction and decimal computation. Students returned in the spring (N = 115 at Time Point 2) to complete an end-of-year mathematics achievement assessment as a measure of grade-level content learned during the year. We found mature number sense to be measurably distinct from related constructs and uniquely predictive of students’ grade-level mathematics achievement at the end of the school year, controlling for their beginning-of-year mathematics achievement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)