Enhancing preschool children's number knowledge: the suitability of an intervention programme for Saudi practice

The Impact of Big Math for Little Kids on Children’s Number Sense

“…These curricula aimed to support children's both basic and advanced math skills via systematically and comprehensively planned activities. Through research studies, it was proved that these math-oriented curricula were effective in enhancing children's math achievements Sarama 2007, 2008;Çelik and Kandır, 2013;Hofer et al, 2013;Kandır et al, 2017;Khomais, 2014;Presser et al, 2015;Sarama et al, 2012). In the present study, we implement one of these programs, namely the BMLK program, to promote children's number skills so that we only present the characteristics and the effectiveness of this program in the following section.…”

“…The effectiveness of the BMLK curriculum on children's learning has been tested with the experimental (Çelik and Kandır, 2013;Presser et al, 2015) and the quasi-experimental studies (Kandır et al, 2017;Khomais, 2014), and a nonexperimental study (DeLoach, 2012). The previous experimental studies investigated the influence of the BMLK curriculum on children's general mathematical development (Çelik and Kandır, 2013;Presser et al, 2015), while the quasi-experimental and the nonexperimental studies tested the effect of the BMLK specifically on children's number skills (DeLoach, 2012;Kandır et al, 2017;Khomais, 2014).…”

“…The effectiveness of the BMLK curriculum on children's learning has been tested with the experimental (Çelik and Kandır, 2013;Presser et al, 2015) and the quasi-experimental studies (Kandır et al, 2017;Khomais, 2014), and a nonexperimental study (DeLoach, 2012). The previous experimental studies investigated the influence of the BMLK curriculum on children's general mathematical development (Çelik and Kandır, 2013;Presser et al, 2015), while the quasi-experimental and the nonexperimental studies tested the effect of the BMLK specifically on children's number skills (DeLoach, 2012;Kandır et al, 2017;Khomais, 2014). More specifically, in a cluster-randomized controlled trial that lasted for two years, Presser and her colleagues (2015) investigated whether the BMLK program is effective in improving low-income children's mathematics learning "above and beyond the mathematics instruction that typically occurs in preschool and kindergarten" (p. 408).…”

“…Studies investigating the influence of the BMLK program on young children's number skills provided empirical evidence for the positive effect of the program (DeLoach, 2012;Kandır et al, 2017;Khomais, 2014). However, the findings of these studies need to be taken with caution since the baseline equivalence for comparison groups in terms of children's number skills was not confirmed (DeLoach, 2012;Khomais, 2014) and difference scores were used to examine the effect of the BMLK program on children's number skills, that leads to several methodological problems such as reduced reliability, confounded effects, and ambiguity (Kandır et al, 2017). For instance, Khomais (2014) examined the effect of the BMLK program on 107 Saudi prekindergarten and kindergarten children with varying socioeconomic backgrounds.…”

“…High-quality early childhood education is critical to equip children with a strong math foundation and using a research-based math curriculum that is proven to promote children's mathematical development could ensure this strong foundation (Bojorque, Torbeyns, Van Hoof, Van Nijlen and Verschaffel, 2018;Sarama 2007, 2008;Çelik and Kandır, 2013;Hofer, Farran and Cummings, 2013;Kandır, Uyanık and Çelik, 2017;Khomais, 2014;Presser, Clements, Ginsburg and Ertle, 2015;Sarama, Lange, Clements and Wolfe, 2012). The present study examines whether supplementing the developmentally-oriented MoNE program with the mathoriented BMLK program has an effect on the growth of children's number skills in kindergarten.…”