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tandfonline.com – A distinction between working memory components as unique predictors of mathematical components in 7–8 year old children

tandfonline.com har udgivet en rapport under søgningen “Teacher Education Mathematics”: Abstract Abstract Despite evidence for the involvement of working memory in mathematics attainment, the understanding of its components relationship to individual areas of mathematics is somewhat restricted. This study aims to better understand this relationship. Two-hundred and fourteen year 3 children in the UK were administered tests of verbal and visuospatial working memory, followed by a standardised mathematics test. Confirmatory factor analyses and variance partitioning were then performed on the data to identify the unique variance accounted for by verbal and visuospatial working memory measures for each component of mathematics assessed. Results revealed contrasting patterns between components, with those typically visual components demonstrating a larger proportion of unique variance explained by visuospatial measures. This pattern reveals a level of specificity… Continue Reading

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tandfonline.com – Children’s development of semantic verbal fluency during summer vacation versus during formal schooling

tandfonline.com har udgivet en rapport under søgningen “Teacher Education Mathematics”: Abstract Abstract Purpose: Children’s results on school-related achievements tests, such as aspects of math, reading and writing, have been shown to decline following a lengthy summer vacation. Few studies have investigated whether this also applies to vocabulary skills. The purpose of this study is to investigate how lexical organization and retrieval, assessed by a semantic verbal fluency (SVF) task, develops during a lengthy summer vacation versus formal schooling. Method: Sixty-eight children with mean age of 7.9 (ranging from 6.5 to 9.1), were assessed pre- and post-summer vacation and post-fall semester using two SVF categories (Animals and Clothes). The number of words produced in both categories gave the total score. Results: The result of the SVF tests decreased following summer vacation.… Continue Reading

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tandfonline.com – A combined approach to strengthen children’s scientific thinking: direct instruction on scientific reasoning and training of teacher’s verbal support

tandfonline.com har udgivet en rapport under søgningen “Teacher Education Mathematics”: ABSTRACT ABSTRACT Inquiry-based lessons have been demonstrated to improve children’s scientific thinking (i.e. reasoning abilities and domain-specific knowledge). Although empirical evidence shows that inquiry-based learning requires instruction, research comes from two approaches that have not been bridged yet: direct instruction of scientific reasoning and teacher training of verbal support. We investigated how these two types of instruction separately or combined strengthened children’s scientific thinking by comparing four conditions: baseline, direct instruction, verbal support, and a combined approach. Effectiveness of an inquiry-based lesson series on scientific reasoning abilities, vocabulary, and domain-specific knowledge (near and far transfer) were studied among 301 fourth graders. Results showed that both approaches strengthened different components of scientific reasoning abilities, and that a combination of instructions was… Continue Reading