Pattern Understanding: Relationships With Arithmetic and Reading Development

Abstract

Pattern understanding (patterning) is commonly taught in early years classrooms. However, the relationship between patterning and academic attainment is not well understood. Studies investigating children's pattern understanding are reviewed. There is some evidence to suggest that pattern understanding is causally related to acquiring math and reading skills. However, much of the evidence is weak and these conclusions remain tentative. Future studies of the relationship between patterning and other skills need to use psychometrically robust measures and analytic techniques that control for the effects of measurement error. The suggestion from current studies that training patterning skills in young children can improve math and reading attainments is tantalizing but larger, methodologically more robust, Randomized Controlled Trials are badly needed to confirm such claims.

Teaching Early Literacy, Mathematics, and Patterning to Kindergartners

“…The empirical research published previously (c.f. reviews by Burgoyne et al, 2017;Pasnak, 2017) has consistently shown relations between the patterning and mathematics scores of both preschoolers and first graders on a variety of mathematics measures, whether the patterns were simple alternations or complex like those used in the present research. However, this experiment and that of Shriver et al (2017) are the only ones conducted with kindergartners, and neither shows such a relationship.…”

Patterning, Reading, and Executive Functions

“…It is known that patterning facilitates later mathematics performance and is related to some early reading skills (cf. reviews by Burgoyne et al, 2017 ; Pasnak, 2017 ). Elementary school curricula already place emphasis on detecting patterns.…”

“…The case for reading is, as Burgoyne et al (2017) suggest, not quite so well established, but seems fairly strong. Hendricks et al (2006) found a significant effect of instruction with a huge assortment of patterns on the written language scale of the Diagnostic Achievement Battery-2, and Kidd et al (2014) found that an intervention also employing numerous types of patterns produced significant differences on the Gray Oral Reading Test-4 (GORT), the Test of Word Reading Ability (TOWRE), and the Test of Early Reading Ability-3 (TERA).…”

“…Detecting a pattern among a set of units is an underlying ability that supports children’s development of mathematics concepts and (perhaps) reading ( Papic and Mulligan, 2005 ; Burgoyne et al, 2017 ; Schmerold et al, 2017 ). In the United States, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2006) and the joint position statement of the National Association for the Education of Young Children/National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Education (2002/2010) recommended helping children to understand patterns, to help ensure that children are prepared for mathematical reasoning.…”

“…However, patterning with alternating numbers and blocks has been commonly taught within preschool and elementary school mathematics curricula for many years ( Clements and Sarama, 2007a ). The brief review by Burgoyne et al (2017) and a more extensive review by Pasnak (2017) summarize evidence from several studies indicating that patterning is related to mathematics, and that children’s understanding of repeating patterns (simple alternating pattern of sizes, colors, or shapes) in kindergarten is predictive of later mathematics achievement in fifth grade ( Rittle-Johnson et al, 2017 ). There is also an influential study ( Lee et al, 2011 ) of relations between older (10- and 11-year-olds) children’s understanding of very complex number patterns and their understanding of algebra.…”