Browsing by Subject "early numeracy"
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(2022)Some previous findings suggest the effectiveness of physical activity (PA) on children's cognitive outcomes. Studying preschool PA enables to understand children’s considerable part of daily PA and to examine its relation to other skills specifically within preschool context. Early numeracy (EN) refers to young children’s mathematical proficiency, including relational and counting skills, as in understanding and operating with quantities, number relation, classification, and the concept of numbers. EN skills are shown to strongly predict later mathematical competence and academic achievements. Thus, it is important to study and support the development of children’s EN skills. However, previous research has mainly focused on school-age children, while research in early ages is scarce. No previous studies have used device-based measurement of PA with an individual test of EN to understand the associations between young children’s preschool PA and EN performance. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between PA during preschool hours and EN performance in children aged 4 to 5 years. More specifically, the following research questions are addressed: 1) How are PA intensity levels during preschool hours associated with EN performance in 4- to 5-year-old children? 2) What kind of profiles regarding PA intensity levels during preschool hours and EN performance can be identified among 4- to 5-year-old children? The sample consisted of children (N = 95, Mage = 4.6) attending preschools in Helsinki, Finland. PA was measured during 5 consecutive preschool days using hip-worn accelerometers, while EN performance was assessed using Van Luit and colleagues’ (2006) Finnish Early Numeracy Test. The data is analysed using quantitative research analysis. To answer the first research question, correlation matrix is performed to reveal relation between the variables of interest. For the second research question, latent profile analysis is used to identify children’s profiles according to their PA data and EN test scores, while the differences in profiles are compared using ANOVA. The results of the correlation analysis revealed no significant correlation between PA level during preschool hours and EN scores in children of ages 4 to 5 years. Latent profile analysis identified three profiles of children with high, medium, and low PA, whereas EN performance did not significantly differ among the profiles. In conclusion, while the results show significantly different amounts of PA among children during preschool, the main finding of the current study is in line with previous research, suggesting no direct relation between preschool PA and EN performance. Further research controlling for other factors that may influence the results is needed to examine how variation in PA level is related to EN performance in preschool.
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(2019)Goals. The purpose of the study was to research the effect of the ThinkMath intervention pro-gramme on the mathematical skills of pre-school students. ThinkMath is based on the meta-analysis of Aunio and Räsänen (2016) where they identified the core numerical skills of 5–8-year olds. The skills are 1) symbolic and non-symbolic number sense, 2) understanding of mathematical relations, 3) counting skills and 4) basic skills in arithmetic. This study determines the starting level of low achieving pre-school students and the effect of the intervention on their development compared to the control groups. Methods. The data was collected as a part of the ThinkMath project during autumn 2013 and spring 2014. A total of 189 pre-school students from Northern and Southern Finland participated in this as-sessment. After the first assessment children were divided into four groups: very low achieving (VERY LOW, N=20) and low achieving (LOW, N=18) intervention groups, and low achieving (LOW C, N=14) and typically achieving (TYP, N=137) control groups. During autumn 2013 chil-dren who scored under 25 percentile were given additional training, except for the group LOW C. In December 2013 the children had a final assessment and in March 2014 a delayed assessment. The differences in skill development between groups were analysed by ANOVA. Results. In the beginning of pre-school VERY LOW differed from both LOWs in total scores and counting skills, and from LOW C in understanding mathematical relations. Immediately after the in-tervention both intervention groups had improved their skill level more compared to control groups in mathematical relations and counting skills. In the delayed assessment the same difference in im-provement in mathematical relations was still found compared to both control groups, and in count-ing skills to TYP. VERY LOW increased their total scores faster than both control groups and LOW faster than TYP. Despite of the greater skill development VERY LOW didn’t catch up TYP starting level during the half year assessment period. Both LOWs reached the TYP starting level in all other sections except for mathematical relations. The results of this study indicate that the intervention programme supports the development of relations and counting skills but is unable to close the gap between low achieving and typically achieving pre-school students
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