Characterizing and assessing number sense in 3rd-8th grade students
Number sense is a key goal of mathematics education in the United States, but it is unclear if students' number sense is improving in 3rd-8th grade. A primary reason for this lack of progress is the absence of a rigorous, yet practical measure of students' number sense in these grades.
This project developed a brief assessment of 3rd-8th grade students' number sense that is now an open-access, free-to-use resource for classroom teachers, educators, and researchers.
The brief assessment developed and validated through this project has been used by teachers across more than 25 schools and over 10 states as well as in multiple tutoring programs.
Number sense is a key outcome in mathematics education in the United States, but we know very little about how it develops, if students are improving in number sense in K-12 education, and what practices might support students' number sense.
This project was a first step in developing a rigorous, yet practical, assessment of students' number sense in 3rd-8th grade that we then used to study number sense's association with students' grade-level learning, math fact knowledge, and fraction computation skills.
We found significant evidence that mature number sense is distinct from the other constructs measured. That is, exhibiting strong number sense is not exactly the same as being “good at school math.” In addition, we found the mature number sense of third-eighth grade students to be the strongest predictor of their start of year achievement scores, more so than their fraction skills, executive functioning, or knowledge of single-digit arithmetic.
Longitudinally, we found fourth-eighth grade students’ mature number sense predicted students’ growth in achievement over a school year, more so than their fraction and decimal computation skills. Taken together, we now have a much stronger evidence base on what exactly number sense is, how researchers and educators can assess it, and how we can further study ways to improve it.
No, this work would not have been possible without EDU funding. The funding enabled us to invite participation from a wide range of teachers and students across the country. We would not have been successful in recruiting enough participants to effectively test our hypotheses without EDU funding.
