Recommended Citation
O'Rear, Connor D.; Zippert, Erica L.; Ehrman, Patrick; Westerberg, Lauren; Lonigan, Christopher J.; and Purpura, David J., "Use them or lose them: Are manipulatives needed to assess numeracy and geometry performance in preschool?" (2023). Purdue Center for Early Learning Faculty and Staff Publications. Paper 14.
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/celpubs/14
Date of this Version
7-19-2023
Abstract
In two studies, we investigated whether using three-dimensional (3D) manipulatives during assessment aided performance on a variety of preschool mathematics tasks compared to pictorial representations. On measures of children's understanding of counting and cardinality (n = 103), there was no difference in performance between manipulatives and pictures, with Bayes factors suggesting moderate evidence in favor of the null hypothesis. On a measure of children's shape identification (n = 93), there was no difference in performance between objects and pictures, with Bayes factors suggesting moderate evidence in favor of the null hypothesis. These results suggest flexibility in the materials that can be used during assessment. Pictures, or 2D renderings of 3D objects, which can be easily printed and reproduced, may be sufficient for assessing counting and shape knowledge without the need for more cumbersome concrete manipulatives.
Comments
This is the publisher PDF of O'Rear, C. D., Zippert, E. L., Ehrman, P., Westerberg, L., Lonigan, C. J., & Purpura, D. J. (2023). Use them or lose them: Are manipulatives needed to assess numeracy and geometry performance in preschool? Infant and Child Development, 32(5), e2444. Published CC-BY-NC by Wiley, the version of record is available at DOI:10.1002/icd.2444.