Raising Early Achievement in Math With Interactive Apps: A Randomized Control Trial.

Improving provision and raising achievement in early math for young children is of national importance. Child-centered apps offer an opportunity to develop strong foundations in learning math as they deliver one-to-one instruction. Reported here is the first pupil-level randomized control trial in the United Kingdom of interactive math apps designed for early years education, with 389 children aged 4-5 years. The original and rigorous research design disentangled the impact of the math apps as a form of quality math instruction from additional exposure to math. It was predicted that using the apps would increase math achievement when implemented by teachers in addition to standard math activities (treatment) or instead of a regular small group-based math activity (time-equivalent treatment) compared with standard math practice only (control). After a 12-week intervention period, results showed significantly greater math learning gains for both forms of app implementation compared with standard math practice. The math apps supported targeted basic facts and concepts and generalized to higher-level math reasoning and problem solving skills. There were no significant differences between the 2 forms of math app implementation, suggesting the math apps can be implemented in a well-balanced curriculum. Features of the interactive apps, which are grounded in instructional psychology and combine aspects of direct instruction with play, may account for the observed learning gains. These novel results suggest that structured, content-rich, interactive apps can provide a vehicle for efficiently delivering high-quality math instruction for all pupils in a classroom context and can effectively raise achievement in early math.

App-based support for parental self-efficacy in the first 1,000 days: A randomized control trial.

Parental self-efficacy is key for guiding parents' interactions with their child and is an important target for early intervention. This study reports a pilot randomized control trial (RCT) of a parenting application (app) with 79 parents of children aged 0-6 months in the United Kingdom. The app includes 1,026 daily age-appropriate activities across eight areas of child development, using resources accessible at home. While controlling for pre-test scores, parents who used the parenting app (Treatment Group) had significantly higher parental self-efficacy, after the 4-week intervention period, compared to the Active Control Group. Partial correlation analyses indicated that higher frequency of self-reported use of the parenting app was associated with greater parental self-efficacy outcomes. This evidence establishes proof of concept that parenting apps can have significant benefits on parental self-efficacy in early childhood. Limitations to the interpretation and generalization of the findings, as well as directions for future research are discussed.

Secondary Benefits to Attentional Processing Through Intervention With an Interactive Maths App.

Previous research has shown that a specific interactive app, designed to support the development of early mathematical skills and delivered on hand-held tablets, is effective at raising mathematical attainment in young children in low-and high-income countries. In the countries where this app has been deployed, teachers have consistently reported improved concentration skills in children who have received intervention with this app. To investigate the legitimacy of these claims, we conducted secondary data analyses of children's performance on core cognitive tasks to examine if additional benefits are observed in children who received intervention with the interactive maths app compared to those that did not. We drew on data from a three-arm randomized control trial conducted in a primary school in Malawi (Pitchford, 2015). In addition to assessing mathematical skills, children's visual attention, short-term memory, and manual processing speed were examined at baseline, before the introduction of the maths app intervention, and at endline, after the intervention had been implemented for 8 weeks. A group of 318 children (73-161 months) attending Standards 1-3 of a Malawian primary school were randomized to receive either the new maths app (treatment group), a non-maths app that required similar interactions to engage with the software as with the maths app (placebo group), or standard teacher-led mathematical practice (control group). Before and after the 8-week intervention period, children were assessed on mathematics and core cognitive skills. Results showed that the maths app intervention supported significant and independent gains in mathematics and visual attention. Increases in visual attention were attributable only to interactions with the maths app. No significant benefits to attention were found from using the tablet device with non-maths software or standard class-based mathematical practice. These results suggest that high-quality interactive, educational apps can significantly improve attentional processing in addition to the scholastic skills targeted by the intervention.

Can Touch Screen Tablets be Used to Assess Cognitive and Motor Skills in Early Years Primary School Children? A Cross-Cultural Study.

Assessment of cognitive and motor functions is fundamental for developmental and neuropsychological profiling. Assessments are usually conducted on an individual basis, with a trained examiner, using standardized paper and pencil tests, and can take up to an hour or more to complete, depending on the nature of the test. This makes traditional standardized assessments of child development largely unsuitable for use in low-income countries. Touch screen tablets afford the opportunity to assess cognitive functions in groups of participants, with untrained administrators, with precision recording of responses, thus automating the assessment process. In turn, this enables cognitive profiling to be conducted in contexts where access to qualified examiners and standardized assessments are rarely available. As such, touch screen assessments could provide a means of assessing child development in both low- and high-income countries, which would afford cross-cultural comparisons to be made with the same assessment tool. However, before touch screen tablet assessments can be used for cognitive profiling in low-to-high-income countries they need to be shown to provide reliable and valid measures of performance. We report the development of a new touch screen tablet assessment of basic cognitive and motor functions for use with early years primary school children in low- and high-income countries. Measures of spatial intelligence, visual attention, short-term memory, working memory, manual processing speed, and manual coordination are included as well as mathematical knowledge. To investigate if this new touch screen assessment tool can be used for cross-cultural comparisons we administered it to a sample of children (N = 283) spanning standards 1-3 in a low-income country, Malawi, and a smaller sample of children (N = 70) from first year of formal schooling from a high-income country, the UK. Split-half reliability, test-retest reliability, face validity, convergent construct validity, predictive criterion validity, and concurrent criterion validity were investigated. Results demonstrate "proof of concept" that touch screen tablet technology can provide reliable and valid psychometric measures of performance in the early years, highlighting its potential to be used in cross-cultural comparisons and research.

Fine Motor Skills Predict Maths Ability Better than They Predict Reading Ability in the Early Primary School Years.

Fine motor skills have long been recognized as an important foundation for development in other domains. However, more precise insights into the role of fine motor skills, and their relationships to other skills in mediating early educational achievements, are needed to support the development of optimal educational interventions. We explored concurrent relationships between two components of fine motor skills, Fine Motor Precision and Fine Motor Integration, and early reading and maths development in two studies with primary school children of low-to-mid socio-economic status in the UK. Two key findings were revealed. First, despite being in the first 2 years of primary school education, significantly better performance was found in reading compared to maths across both studies. This may reflect the protective effects of recent national-level interventions to promote early literacy skills in young children in the UK that have not been similarly promoted for maths. Second, fine motor skills were a better predictor of early maths ability than they were of early reading ability. Hierarchical multiple regression revealed that fine motor skills did not significantly predict reading ability when verbal short-term memory was taken into account. In contrast, Fine Motor Integration remained a significant predictor of maths ability, even after the influence of non-verbal IQ had been accounted for. These results suggest that fine motor skills should have a pivotal role in educational interventions designed to support the development of early mathematical skills.