Læst 13 gange
eric.ed.gov har udgivet:
The aim of the “Tools of the Mind” prekindergarten curriculum is to enhance children’s executive function skills within an instructional context that promotes the basic academic and social skills that prepare them for kindergarten and beyond. To investigate the effectiveness of “Tools” in achieving this aim, the authors are conducting a longitudinal randomized experiment to answer the following questions: (1) Do children in “Tools of the Mind” classrooms improve more in literacy, math, social skills, and behavior problems during the preschool year than children in “business as usual” control classrooms? Are those gains sustained through kindergarten and first grade?; (2) Do children in “Tools of the Mind” classrooms show greater gains in executive function than children in the control classrooms? Do those gains mediate the curriculum effects on literacy, math and social skills outcomes?; and (3) Are there differential effects of “Tools of the Mind” associated with characteristics of the children or the classrooms? Four school districts in Tennessee and two in North Carolina participated in the study. The authors’ results show that there were no significant treatment effects on any of their outcome variables. Students in “Tools” classrooms performed about equally well on all outcome variables, including the executive function measures, after receiving a year of the curriculum as students who received the usual preschool curriculum. Similarly there were no differences between the two sets of classrooms in teacher ratings of social and behavioral competence. In addition, the “Tools” curriculum did not appear to result in significantly better outcomes for any student subgroups (i.e., ELL, ethnic groups, gender) when compared to the control condition. Gains on all outcomes were observed across the preschool year in both “Tools” and comparison classrooms. (Contains 2 tables.)