Elsevier

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

Volume 46, 1st Quarter 2019, Pages 166-178
Early Childhood Research Quarterly

The roles of patterning and spatial skills in early mathematics development

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.03.006Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Preschool children’s repeating patterning and spatial skills were related.

  • Patterning and spatial skills predicted math knowledge at beginning and end of prek.

  • Theories and standards for early math should include pattern and spatial skills.

Abstract

Because math knowledge begins to develop at a young age to varying degrees, it is important to identify foundational cognitive and academic skills that might contribute to its development. The current study focused on two important, but often overlooked skills that recent evidence suggests are important contributors to early math development: patterning and spatial skills. We assessed preschool children’s repeating patterning skills, spatial skills, general cognitive skills and math knowledge at the beginning of the pre-kindergarten year. We re-assessed their math knowledge near the end of the school year, with complete data for 73 children. Children’s repeating patterning and spatial skills were related and were each unique predictors of children’s math knowledge at the same time point and seven months later. Further, repeating patterning skills predicted later math knowledge even after controlling for prior math knowledge. Thus, although repeating patterning and spatial skills are related, repeating patterning skills are a unique predictor of math knowledge and growth. Both theories of early math development and early math standards should be expanded to incorporate a role for repeating patterning and spatial skills.

Section snippets

Math education standards

The Common Core State Standards (2010), or local variations of them, are currently being implemented in schools across the country. However, these standards give minimal attention to patterning or spatial skills in the early grades. Patterning skills encompass the ability to notice and use predicable sequences, such as a predictable array of shapes or sounds or functional relations between two variables (Burgoyne, Witteveen, Tolan, Malone, & Hulme, 2017). With young children, the focus is on

Spatial skills

First consider spatial skills. Young children regularly engage their spatial skills as they play with blocks, puzzles, and videogames (Jirout & Newcombe, 2015; Levine, Ratliff, Huttenlocher, & Cannon, 2012; Newcombe, 2010; Verdine, Golinkoff, Hirsh-Pasek, Newcombe, et al., 2014). In one large, representative sample, 75% of 4- to 7-year old children were reported to play with blocks, puzzles and board games at least sometimes (i.e., three to five times per week), and 25% were reported to play

Links between spatial skills and math knowledge

How might spatial skills influence math knowledge? The most common theoretical perspective is that mathematical thinking is supported by spatial representations (Mix & Cheng, 2012). From mental number lines to geometric figures, information about locations in space are often processed when solving math problems. For example, some people generate schematic representations of math problems that include the spatial relations described in the problems, and these people are more likely to solve the

Repeating patterning skills

Young children, teachers, and parents all regularly work with repeating patterns. For example, some children spontaneously create patterns during their free play at preschool (Ginsburg, Inoue, & Seo, 1999; Ginsburg, Lin, Ness, & Seo, 2003). Further, U.S. preschool teachers often view patterning activities as important (Clarke, Clarke, & Cheeseman, 2006; Economopoulos, 1998). In one small study, U.S. teachers reported engaging their students in frequent repeating patterning activities, and

Links between repeating patterning skills and math knowledge

How might repeating patterning skills support math knowledge? Identifying, extending, and describing predictable sequences (patterns) in objects and numbers are core to mathematical thinking (Charles, 2005; Sarama & Clements, 2004; Steen, 1988). Both counting and arithmetic principles describe generalizations of predictable sequences. For example, the next number name in the count sequence represents a magnitude that is exactly one more than the previous number name (i.e., the successor

Potential relations between spatial and repeating patterning skills

Although both spatial and repeating patterning skills play an important role in math development, they have been studied independently in past research. Thus, little is known about the relations between the two types of skills. For example, children may rely on spatial skills to complete repeating patterning tasks, especially when the tasks include working with visual patterns constructed with objects. The spatial skill of form perception is likely needed to distinguish and match objects that

Research goals and hypotheses

The goal of this research was to explore the cross-domain development of repeating patterning skills, spatial skills, and math knowledge in prekindergarten. We focused on prekindergarten children (ages 4 and 5) because some patterning and spatial skills are in place by age 4, and individual differences in these skills in prekindergarten are already predictive of later math knowledge (Rittle-Johnson et al., 2013, Rittle-Johnson et al., 2016; Verdine et al., 2017). Further, much less is known

Participants

Initial participants were 79 children who were recruited from six preschool programs: three public, one Head Start center, and two private. Two children would not assent to participate in the study, one child was withdrawn from the study because of other commitments, and three children were no longer attending the participating preschools at Time 2 and could not be located. In the final sample of 73 children (57.5% females), children were an average age of 4 years 7 months (SD = 4 months; range = 4 

Relations among variables

Descriptive statistics and correlations among key variables at both time points are presented in Table 3, with raw correlations presented above the diagonal. To provide a sense of the global relation between repeating patterning and spatial skills, we created composite scores for each (by averaging standardized scores on relevant measures) and include those composite variables in the Table. Significant positive correlations were found among all tasks. In most cases, these positive relations

Discussion

The current study highlights the contribution of two important, but often overlooked, skills in early math development: spatial and repeating patterning skills. The two skill sets were related, and each set of skills was a unique predictor of math knowledge concurrently and 7-months later. We discuss the development of a new patterning skills measure, the potential relations between repeating patterning and spatial skills, and the relations between each of these skills and math knowledge. We

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    Research supported by Institute of Education Sciences grant R305A160132 to Bethany Rittle-Johnson. The authors thank Danielle Bice, Katherine Gross, Haley Rushing, Joyce Hwang, Mia MacLean-Vernic, and Yinghao Zhang for their assistance with data collection and coding as well as the staff, teachers, and children at A. Z. Kelley Elementary School, Hull Jackson Montessori School, Shayne Elementary School, McNeilly Center for Children, Blakemore Children’s Center, and Holly Street Daycare for participating in this research.

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