University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: October 24, 2002

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor

Education researchers at UB and the University of California-Berkeley have received a four-year, $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to evaluate a pre-school math curriculum that combines methods developed by the two research teams.

The grant recipients are Julie Sarama, assistant professor, and Douglas Clements, professor, both in the Department of Learning and Instruction in the UB Graduate School of Education, who will serve as lead investigators, and Prentice Starkey, associate professor of education in the Berkeley Graduate School of Education, and Alice Klein of UC-Berkeley's Institute on Human Development.

The UB-Berkeley study is one of seven funded by the DOE Preschool Curriculum Evaluation Research Grants Program (PCER) to evaluate the effectiveness of preschool curricula, and the only one whose overarching goal is to assess and support young children's mathematical development.

The curriculum under consideration combines elements of Clements' and Sarama's "Building Blocks Project," developed under a five-year, $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, and the "Berkeley Math Readiness Project," a print-based, pre-school math curriculum developed by Starkey and Klein under a DOE grant.

The "Berkeley Math Readiness Project" is a culturally and developmentally appropriate, pre-K math curriculum that features teacher-guided small group activities, math learning center activities—including computer math activities—and parent-child learning activities.

"Building Blocks" employs state-of-the-art software, concrete "manipulatives," and everyday objects in the teaching of math to pre-school children. These materials have been tested in several Buffalo-area schools and found to have a strong, positive effect on mathematics learning in pre-school children.

Sarama says many area classrooms, including Head Start classrooms and the universal pre-K programs in the Buffalo Public Schools, will participate in this study as well.

She explains that each of the seven PCER projects has both a national research thrust and a focus specific to each. All projects will use randomized clinical trials to assess the rigorous evaluations. The Buffalo-Berkeley project will assess the effect of the combined curriculum on preschoolers' long-term math achievement.

The Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina, under contract to the DOE, will consolidate the results of all seven PCER projects to answer common questions. General implications drawn will help school districts make informed choices about content and teaching methods used in early childhood programs.

Clements notes that a major focus of the White House "Summit on Early Childhood Cognitive Development," held in July 2001, was the creation of early learning activities that parents and educators can use to prepare young children for school.

"Improving education with research-based teaching like this," he says, "is one of the four basic principles of reform in 'No Child Left Behind,' President Bush's comprehensive education-reform plan, and an important piece of "Good Start, Grow Smart," the Bush administration's early childhood initiative."

Notes Grover "Russ" Whitehurst, U.S. assistant secretary for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement: "(The PCER) grants will help us determine for the first time which preschool programs work best for which children. Results should help educators and parents make more informed choices of classroom curricula."

Clements and Sarama have taught children from preschool through university age and have developed and extensively evaluated curriculum and software for several NSF-funded projects.

For "Investigations in Number, Data and Space," they wrote 10 software programs and co-authored all the geometry units. For "Building Blocks—Foundations for Mathematical Thinking, Pre-K to 2: Research-based Materials Development," they produced the software curriculum to be used in this study.

They also ran the historic national "Conference on Standards for Preschool and Kindergarten Mathematics Education," co-funded by NSF and Exxon-Mobil Foundation, which resulted in a book.