Longitudinally adaptive assessment and instruction increase numerical skills of preschool children.

ABSTRACT: Social inequality in mathematical skill is apparent at kindergarten entry and persists during elementary school. To level the playing field, we trained teachers to assess children's numerical and spatial skills every 10 wk. Each assessment provided teachers with information about a child's growth trajectory on each skill, information designed to help them evaluate their students' progress, reflect on past instruction, and strategize for the next phase of instruction. A key constraint is that teachers have limited time to assess individual students. To maximize the information provided by an assessment, we adapted the difficulty of each assessment based on each child's age and accumulated evidence about the child's skills. Children in classrooms of 24 trained teachers scored 0.29 SD higher

SUBMITTER: Raudenbush SW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7668039 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature