Browsing by Author "Westerholm, Alma"

Earlier studies have shown that in Finland immigrant children have on average poorer numeracy skills than native Finnish children. More and more children with immigrant background enter schools so effective means to support their numeracy skills are highly needed. The study explores if immigrant children's early numeracy skills can be supported with an intensive early numeracy intervention programme. A total of ten six-year-old immigrant children participated in the study in a preschool in the metropolitan area. Half of the children had intense training in early numeracy skills during the day in preschool twice a week for about eight weeks. The other half of the children formed a control group who participated in preschool activities as usual. The children's early numeracy skills were measured with Early Numeracy Test (Van Luit, Van de Rijt & Aunio, 2006) as pretest, immediate posttest and delayed posttest. There was also a logbook that was filled during and immediately after the training sessions so that assessment of fidelity would be possible. The participants' background information and level of Finnish skills were asked from the preschool teachers. These pieces of information were used as control variable. The children in the intervention group improved their early numeracy skills during the intervention more than the children in the control group. Especially the effect was seen in understanding mathematical relations. The intervention group performed statistically significantly better in the immediate posttest and the delayed posttest than the control group. In counting skills the results weren't significant. In the Early Numeracy Test (Van Luit, Van de Rijt & Aunio, 2006) as a whole, the intervention group performed significantly better in the immediate posttest, but the gap was not statistically significant in the delayed posttest. This study shows that by supporting immigrant children's early numeracy skills with an evidence-based intervention programme, their skills in understanding mathematical relations improve significantly and permanently. The immigrant children can also get their numeracy skills to the same level with the native Finnish children and so the intervention programme for one can prevent them from dropping out of the school system later.