Research

Children's Understanding of Foundational Math Skills

Our lab is interested in how children come to understand foundational math skills, and how we can promote better understanding of these skills. Skills in preschool and kindergarten form the basis for students' learning throughout elementary school, and knowledge gained in elementary school forms the basis for more advanced mathematics learning. We are interested in targeting foundational skills because children who struggle to grasp early skills tend to be at risk for later math difficulties. 

For example, one key skill our research team has focused on is children’s understanding of math-specific language (e.g., more, less). We found that understanding of math language was the greatest predictor of kindergarteners’ response to a math intervention based on achievement six months later (Devlin, Hornburg, & McNeil, 2017). In another study, we demonstrated that preschoolers’ understanding of math language is related to most specific numeracy skills, and it is more proximal to those skills than is general language (Hornburg, Schmitt, & Purpura, 2018). Math language is also a significant predictor of the development of most specific numeracy skills across preschool (Hornburg et al., 2024).

Supporting the Home Environment and Classroom Learning

In an effort to synthesize the core questions and key considerations in the area of the home mathematics environment in early childhood, Dr. Hornburg (director of the Learning and Development Lab) led a manuscript detailing these aspects in a large collaborative effort with international participation, resulting from a virtual conference in Fall 2020 (Hornburg, Borriello et al, 2021). Since 2021, our lab conducted an online survey of approximately 100 caregivers of 3-5 year-olds, about their beliefs and activities surrounding early math, and we are currently coding and analyzing that data in preparation for an article submission.

On a larger scale, Dr. Hornburg was the PI on a funded development and evaluation project My Math Stories: Taking My Place in Our Mathematical World (2020-2023, funded by NewSchools Venture Fund and Advanced Education Research and Development Fund). In this project, we developed a curriculum overlay for 3rd-5th grade multi-step problem solving specifically designed for, and with, teachers and students from under-resourced schools. Seven teachers piloted the full 9-week set of activities in the 2022-2023 year, and we found that participation increased students’ executive functioning skills, problem-solving skills, math-specific vocabulary, and a greater sense of noticing math in their environment. Our team is applying for additional funding to further refine the intervention and evaluate it on a larger scale. The books developed in this project are available on Amazon in both English and Spanish!

Finally, Dr. Hornburg is a Co-PI on a grant from the National Science Foundation (led by PI Dr. Erin Ottmar at Worcester Polytechnic Institute), which is focused on improving sixth-grade students' solving of order-of-operations problems, through leveraging perceptual cues during problem solving. We worked with local 6th grade teachers and students during the 2023-2024 year for the first study of the project. Check out the Perceptual Cues Study project website for more information!

Connection to Real-World Educational Contexts

One major component of what we do in the Learning and Development Lab is to take our findings from assessments and one-on-one activities and translate that effectively into the classroom. Our ultimate goal is to provide educators with tools to best support student learning!