Refining Understanding of the Home Math Environment in the Early Years: An Interdisciplinary Working Conference

Effective Years: 2020-2022

This award to Purdue University provides partial support for a conference focused on the home numeracy environment (HNE). The conference addresses this critically important topic, drawing on researchers from a range of disciplines and literatures. A robust finding across these literatures is that achievement gaps in math exist at preschool and largely persist through high school. Though it is clear that socio-economic status (SES) plays a significant role in producing these gaps, a better understanding of specific causal mechanisms is needed. Moreover, there may be other important home-based factors that could inoculate children, protecting them from lagging behind in mathematics upon school entry. The conference is a unique opportunity for researchers across disciplines to share the results of their cutting-edge work, receive feedback on the translational opportunities, and get a sense of how to move forward. The project is funded by the EHR Core Research program, which supports fundamental research that advances the research literature on STEM learning.

The conference has three aims: First, discussion around variability in HNE across age and culture; second, the development of a review of the extant literature on HNE (identifying gaps and future directions); and, third, the development of a better survey measure of HNE. The output of the conference will include a working paper that presents a coherent vision for the HNE research community. The award will largely help offset expenses for participants related to travel. It will also support the development of the position paper that provides a foundation for the field to move forward.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.