Open AccessA longitudinal study of early math skills, reading comprehension and mathematical problem solving
Author(s) -
Zeynep Özcan,
Handan Doğan
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
eğitim ve öğretim/eğitim ve öğretim
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 3
eISSN - 2148-239X
pISSN - 2146-0655
DOI - 10.14527/pegegog.2018.001
Subject(s) - mathematics education , reading comprehension , comprehension , reading (process) , mathematical problem , cognition , word problem (mathematics education) , longitudinal study , computer science , cognitive psychology , mathematics , psychology , linguistics , statistics , philosophy , neuroscience , programming language
Mathematical problem solving is regarded as the one of the important cognitive activities. Children are introduced with mathematical word problems that require reading and understanding in the first grade. Students have trouble with word problems in every level of education. For this reason, it is important to find the reasons for this issue in the first year of primary school. The purpose of this study is to find the relationship between mathematical problem solving with early math skills and reading comprehension. Specifically, the aim of this study is to determine which of these variables are most powerful in predicting mathematical problem solving performance. The panel research method as a type of longitudinal study was used in this study. The sample of this study consists of 185 first grades (66'84 month) students from a public elementary school in Istanbul. The measurement instruments are Bracken Basic Concept Scale: Expressive, reading comprehension questions and mathematics problem-solving questions. The final model implies that early math skills have direct effects on reading comprehension (β=.34) and mathematical problem solving (β=.45). Reading comprehension has a direct effect on mathematical problem solving (β=.27). However, this effect is smaller than the effect of early math skills.