David Geary, the Curators’ Professor, and Thomas Jefferson, fellow at the University of Missouri, found that the earlier children become “cardinal principle knowers,” the better they perform at school.
Cardinal knowledge is the ability to match the concept of a unique quantity to an actual number. For example, the ability to know that the number eight is larger than five without needing to count.
“While many children are able to count with ease at pre-school age, not all are successful in translating those numbers to discrete quantities,” Geary said.
The analysis paper found that the earlier children are able to demonstrate cardinal knowledge also significantly predicts how quickly they will learn maths in the future.
“Around half of the difference in students’ mathematics achievement in school is predicted by their cardinal knowledge before starting school,” Geary said.
CIS Director of Education Program Glenn Fahey said when people talk about early education and development of children, it is often focused on literacy elements like how well students can read and how many words they know.
“So what’s important about this research is that today, there are almost no interventions that are used in early education actually focus on developing cardinal knowledge,” Fahey told The Epoch Times.
He noted that this applied not only to settings like preschool, but also at home when parents are instructing their children.
“Many parents understand that it’s important to spend time reading with children but they’re not so aware of that importance of relating to cardinality,” Fahey said.
While there are studies that suggest cardinality can be specifically developed, there is little knowledge that outlines exactly how it can be done.
“Some of the suggestions that have been trialled in small scale studies include things like including number concepts into storybooks,” Fahey said. “But unfortunately, most play activities with young children are around counting or just knowing numbers rather than translating those known numbers to a quantity.”
Due to the lack of understanding around early detection of a students’ success in maths, Geary said early intervention for students was often too late or not well targeted.
For example, there are some early interventions that focus on improving the precision of a student’s ability to approximate numbers and quantities. However, Geary said once children sufficiently understand that concept, it was not important to learning maths further down the line.
Geary calls for early interventions that target parent-child number-related activities, preschool experiences, and other child development factors such as those that promote better attentive classroom behaviour.
The results are derived from a four-year longitudinal study, including two years of preschool, kindergarten, and first grade.
