Mature Number Sense Predicts Middle School Students' Mathematics Achievement

Students with mature number sense make sense of numbers and operations, use reasoning to notice patterns, and flexibly select the most effective and efficient problem-solving strategies (McIntosh et al., 1997; R. Reys et al., 1999; Yang, 2005). Although national standards and policy documents (e.g., CCSS, 2010; NCTM, 2000, 2014) emphasize the importance of number sense, limited research exists on the association between students' mature number sense and other important psychological constructs in mathematics education, such as grade-level mathematics achievement. The present study addressed this gap through a longitudinal design, advancing fundamental knowledge of number sense as a construct. At the start of the school year, middle school students (N = 129 at Time Point 1) completed measures of mature number sense and several related constructs, including grade-level mathematics achievement, executive functioning, and fraction and decimal computation. Students returned in the spring (N = 115 at Time Point 2) to complete an end-of-year mathematics achievement assessment as a measure of grade-level content learned during the year. We found mature number sense to be measurably distinct from related constructs and uniquely predictive of students' grade-level mathematics achievement at the end of the school year, controlling for their beginning-of-year mathematics achievement.