This proposed project is an empirical study that falls within the contextual research strand of the REESE program. The aim is to conduct research about STEM education relative to achievement gaps that exist between minority and disadvantaged students and their non-minority counterparts. The outcomes of this study will help in addressing the convergence of several trends that may exact increasing costs to individuals on the lower end of the gap, the economy, and to social and political ideas.
The achievement gap is a deceptively complex scientific problem that will increasingly require studying the origin and evolution of gaps from earliest childhood. In that regard, this study will integrate research trends in the developmental sciences, the cognitive and neurosciences and economics, and education research and other strands of social science to develop interventions to address gaps in more efficient ways.
The first large nationally representative longitudinal data collection will be used for this study. This large database includes information from nine months to grade eight that will be used to test and compare the leading hypotheses about the origin and evolution of gaps. To meet the challenge of turning such data into credible evidence that might inform intervention plans and further research, two statistical estimation strategies (growth and econometric models), information from supporting meta-analysis, and an extensive advisory network of experts will be used to conduct the study.
The research will focus on: (1) Building better theoretical and empirical research models directed toward understanding how these gaps develop from conception to school entry; (2) Identifying effective strategies and inventions that might efficiently narrow gaps prior to school entry; (3) Building better explanations about why gaps are so difficult to close during schooling; (4) formulating stronger suggestions about why gaps for some minority groups expand during schooling, while gaps for other minority students narrow; and (5) Identifying the conditions associated with significant positive changes in learning trajectories during schooling for the small proportion of minority and disadvantaged students who narrow their score differences with white advantaged students.
Broader Impacts: The study is likely to advance knowledge and discovery in the field in that it brings together researchers from many fields to examine ways to better understand the achievement gap in STEM areas. The results could benefit education stakeholders interested in improving STEM education for all students. Potentially, this study could inform and influence current policy considerations regarding mandatory pre-school enrollment, and in that regard could be transformative. State and local policymakers will assist with dissemination as well as national outlets established through earlier studies.
Math achievement gaps for disadvantaged students have been immune to 25 years of K-12 school reform directed toward improved math instruction. A possible explanation suggested by our research is that achievement gaps are formed prior to school entry and caused by deficits in foundational cognitive skills like executive function and visuospatial skills. These skills appear to be essential to learning math, but are learned largely outside of direct math instruction. Our research showed that children from disadvantaged groups show significantly lower levels of executive function and visuospatial skills at school entry than advantaged children, For instance, black children eligible for free lunch are about 15 months behind advantaged children in their development of EF skills and 10 months behind in visuospatial skills. This research led to the design of a play-based intervention implemented in an after school program to improve executive function and visuospatial skills. This intervention focused primarily on play activities in which children replicated a two or three dimensional models using a variety of commercially available games and materials. The intervention was administered four days a week for 45 minutes each day, and for a maximum of 28 weeks. This experimentally designed study was conducted with 83 high-risk kindergarten and first grade students with about one-half of the children randomized into the intervention group, and the remaining children in a control group who did not receive the intervention. The results of the intervention showed moderate to large, statistically significant improvement in executive function and visuospatial skills of these high-risk K-1 children. More importantly, the intervention also significantly improved certain 1st grade math skills without incorporating explicit math instruction or by changing the math curriculum during 1st grade. These experimental results bolster the hypothesis that deficits in EF and visuospatial skills are a partial cause of math achievement gaps for disadvantaged children, and open up a new policy direction for addressing such gaps. These results might also help explain why math achievement gaps have remained fairly immune to 25 years of K-12 school reform. Disadvantaged children may be unable to take full advantage of school reform efforts due to skill deficits in EF and visuospatial skills. Disadvantaged children with less opportunity to learn these skills in their home environment start school with much lower levels of these skills. Furthermore, these skills remain immune to improvements in direct math instruction, in part because school reform efforts have not explicitly taught these skills as part of the early curriculum. Disadvantaged children can carry these skill deficits throughout schooling. Closing these early foundational skill deficits prior to or in early schooling may actually increase the effectiveness of the K-12 school reform policies implemented over the last 25 years. Our results suggest that the effectiveness of current teachers and math curriculum and the associated math achievement in their classrooms may increase as more children in their classrooms have higher levels of foundational skills that make learning math easier. This research also opens a new path for addressing math gaps with play-based activities during out-of-school time. Almost all previous interventions to improve foundational or math skills of disadvantaged children have focused on time in pre-school or school. Early math achievement gaps may be caused as much by differences in what children experience outside rather than inside the K-12 school system. Incorporating play-based activities in after-school and summertime programs and teaching parents home-based activities opens up intriguing possibilities for building these foundational cognitive skills and improving math scores in the early years of school. For instance, parents have responded to research and widespread publicity over the last 20 years about the value of reading more to their children. Playing certain kinds of games with children may be as important to math skills as reading to children is to building literacy skills. Another important finding derived from our intervention is that building visuospatial skills may be a new pathway to also building strong executive function skills. Play-based activities that build visuospatial skills have not been previously conceptualized as an effective way to improve executive function skills. However, executive function is intimately linked to any type of task requiring learning- including learning complex visuospatial tasks. Gains in executive function may often be a by-product of interventions that target other foundational skills, and these types of interventions that target and build multiple skills are likely to be more cost effective than interventions targeted on a single skill. This suggests continued research to understand the developmental interrelationships among foundational skills.
