Professor Pirjo Aunio from the Active Numeracy research group, together with her colleagues Professor Jo Van Herwegen (United College of London) and Professor Dieter Baeyens (KU Leuven), wrote a research article on the direction in which research on young children's mathematical skills could be developed. The article also reflects the researchers' ambition to develop research on mathematical learning difficulties. The researchers make three recommendations.
First, there are many different mathematical skills, the development of which should be studied in relation to each other and to more general cognitive skills, so that as many factors as possible are considered simultaneously. The authors also stress that children's learning should be studied as part of a wider learning environment.
The second recommendation is to improve the quality of intervention research in order to better understand the effectiveness of, for example, educational interventions. The researchers suggest that intervention researchers should introduce an effectiveness ladder that allows other researchers and education professionals to review the effectiveness evidence collected. The first level of the ladder includes basic descriptive information about the intervention programme, such as a description of the objective, the target group, the requirements for implementation and the setting in which the intervention was delivered. The second level describes the theoretical basis for the effectiveness mechanism of the intervention programme, for instance what theoretical knowledge and previous research suggests that the intervention programme will produce the intended effect. The evidence in the third level builds on the empirical evidence from the first level to establish that the intervention programme has the desired effect. The empirical evidence in the fourth level provides information on causality. At this level, for example, the effectiveness of differences in intervention durations and frequencies can be demonstrated. At the fourth level, the research design can be based on the use of an intervention and a control group, but the use of a control group is not yet mandatory at this level. In the highest fifth level the aim is to report the strongest evidence for the intervention effectiveness, in this level the use of control group is mandatory. The researchers note that, although researchers who have developed interventions are able to produce evidence at each level of the evidence ladder, there is unfortunately little research on how these interventions become part of teaching and educational practices.
The third recommendation concerns the methods used to assess early mathematical skills. The fact that researchers use different assessment tools to measure early mathematical skills often makes it difficult to summarise the results of studies. it would be good if researchers clearly reported which mathematical skills their assessment tool measures. This would make it easier to understand the results and use the data. It is also important for the development of assessment tools that researchers review and report the validity and reliability of their own assessment tool evidence as widely as possible. This is particularly important when designing assessment tools to support the work of teaching and educational staff. A key challenge for the future is the production of reliable assessment tools for different language groups, where digitalisation will be a major help.
The article was published at the end of March 2025 in the Journal for the Study of Education and Development and is freely available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/02103702251325611.
Aunio, P., Van Herwegen, J., & Baeyens, D. (2025). Early mathematics learning: multifactorial nature of early mathematics skills, effectiveness of educational interventions and challenges with measurements. Infancia y Aprendizaje = Journal for the Study of Education and Development. https://doi.org/10.1177/02103702251325611