There is intense public interest in questions surrounding how children learn to read and how they can best be taught. Research in psychological science has provided answers to many of these questions but, somewhat surprisingly, this research has been slow to make inroads into educational policy and practice. Instead, the field has been plagued by decades of “reading wars.” Even now, there remains a wide gap between the state of research knowledge about learning to read and the state of public understanding. The aim of this article is to fill this gap. We present a comprehensive tutorial review of the science of learning to read, spanning from children’s earliest alphabetic skills through to the fluent word recognition and skilled text comprehension characteristic of expert readers. We explain why phonics instruction is so central to learning in a writing system such as English. But we also move beyond phonics, reviewing research on what else children need to learn to become expert readers and considering how this might be translated into effective classroom practice. We call for an end to the reading wars and recommend an agenda for instruction and research in reading acquisition that is balanced, developmentally informed, and based on a deep understanding of how language and writing systems work.

Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert (vol 19, pg 5, 2018)

https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/cdep.12352

The Development of Academic Achievement and Cognitive Abilities: A Bidirectional Perspective

The present study explored the bidirectional and longitudinal associations between executive function (EF) and early academic skills (math and literacy) across 4 waves of measurement during the transition from preschool to kindergarten using 2 complementary analytical approaches: cross-lagged panel modeling and latent growth curve modeling (LCGM). Participants included 424 children (49% female). On average, children were approximately 4.5 years old at the beginning of the study (M = 4.69, SD = .30) and 55% were enrolled in Head Start. Cross-lagged panel models indicated bidirectional relations between EF and math over preschool, which became directional in kindergarten with only EF predicting math. Moreover, there was a bidirectional relation between math and literacy that emerged in kindergarten. Similarly, LGCM revealed correlated growth between EF and math as well as math and literacy, but not EF and literacy. Exploring the patterns of relations across the waves of the panel model in conjunction with the patterns of relations between intercepts and slopes in the LGCMs led to a more nuanced understanding of the relations between EF and academic skills across preschool and kindergarten. Implications for future research on instruction and intervention development are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

/pdf/examining-the-relations-between-executive-function-math-and-1fzd4hngh9.pdf

Examining the Relations between Executive Function, Math, and Literacy during the Transition to Kindergarten: A Multi-Analytic Approach.

Children's early mathematics skills develop in a cumulative fashion; foundational skills form a basis for the acquisition of later skills. However, non-mathematical factors such as working memory and language skills have also been linked to mathematical development at a broad level. Unfortunately, little research has been conducted to evaluate the specific relations of these two non-mathematical factors to individual aspects of early mathematics. Thus, the focus of this study was to determine whether working memory and language were related to only individual aspects of early mathematics or related to many components of early mathematics skills. A total of 199 4- to 6-year-old preschool and kindergarten children were assessed on a battery of early mathematics tasks as well as measures of working memory and language. Results indicated that working memory has a specific relation to only a few-but critically important-early mathematics skills and language has a broad relation to nearly all early mathematics skills.

/pdf/working-memory-and-language-skill-specific-or-domain-general-1pa0yzxkda.pdf

Working Memory and Language: Skill-Specific or Domain-General Relations to Mathematics?.

Academic achievement is one of the most important indicators for assessing students’ performance and educational attainment. Family socioeconomic status (SES) is the main factor influencing academic achievement, but the relation between SES and academic achievement may vary across different sociocultural contexts. China is the most populous developing country with a large number of schooling students in the basic education stage. Chinese schools are unified and managed by the Ministry of Education, but the central and local governments in accordance with their responsibilities share the investment of educational funds. However, the strength of the relation between SES and academic achievement and possible moderators of this relation remain unclear. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis on the relation between SES and academic achievement based on 215,649 students from 78 independent samples in the basic education stage from mainland China. The results indicated a moderate relation between SES and academic achievement (r = 0.243) in general. Moderation analyses indicated that the relation between SES and academic achievement gradually decreased in the past several decades; SES has a stronger correlation with language achievement (i.e., Chinese and English) than science/math achievement and general achievement. These findings were discussed from the perspective of governmental policies on education.

The Relation Between Family Socioeconomic Status and Academic Achievement in China: A Meta-analysis

This study aimed to determine the relations between fluid intelligence (Gf) and reading/mathematics and possible moderators. A meta-analysis of 680 studies involving 793 independent samples and more than 370,000 participants found that Gf was moderately related to reading, r = .38, 95% CI [.36, .39], and mathematics, r = .41, 95% CI [.39, 44]. Synthesis on the longitudinal correlations showed that Gf and reading/mathematics predicted each other in the development even after controlling for initial performance. Moderation analyses revealed the following findings: (a) Gf showed stronger relations to mathematics than to reading, (b) within reading or mathematics, Gf showed stronger relations to complex skills than to foundational skills, (c) the relations between Gf and reading/mathematics increased with age, and (d) family social economic status (SES) mostly affected the relations between Gf and reading/mathematics in the early development stage. These findings, taken together, are partially in line with the investment theory but are more in line with the intrinsic cognitive load theory, mutualism theory, and the gene-SES interaction hypothesis of cognition and learning. More importantly, these findings imply an integration model of these theories from an educational and developmental perspective: Children may rely on Gf to learn reading and mathematics early on, when high family SES can boost the effects of Gf on reading/mathematics performance. As children receive more formal schooling and gain more learning experiences, their reading and mathematics improvement may promote their Gf development. During development, the negative effects of low family SES on the relations between Gf and reading/mathematics may be offset by education/learning experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

A meta-analysis on the relation between fluid intelligence and reading/mathematics: Effects of tasks, age, and social economics status.

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine the relation between mathematics anxiety (MA) and mathematics performance among school-aged students, and to identify potential moderators and under...

The relation between mathematics anxiety and mathematics performance among school-aged students: A meta-analysis.

This study presents a meta-analysis of the relation between language and mathematics. A moderate relation between language and mathematics was found in 344 studies with 393 independent samples and more than 360,000 participants, r = .42, 95% CI [.40, .44]. Moderation and partial correlation analyses revealed the following: (a) more complicated language and mathematics skills were associated with stronger relations between language and mathematics; after partialing out working memory and intelligence, rapid automatized naming showed the strongest relation to numerical knowledge; (b) the relation between language and mathematics was stronger among native language speakers than among second-language learners, but this difference was not found after partialing out working memory and intelligence; (c) working memory and intelligence together explained over 50% of the variance in the relation between language and mathematics and explained more variance in such relations involving complex mathematics skills; (d) language and mathematics predicted the development of one another even after controlling for initial performance. These findings suggest that we may use language as a medium to communicate, represent, and retrieve mathematics knowledge as well as to facilitate working memory and reasoning during mathematics performance and learning. With development, the use of language to retrieve mathematics knowledge may be more important for foundational mathematics skills, which in turn further strengthens linguistic thought processes for performing more advanced mathematics tasks. Such use of language may boost the mutual effects of cognition and mathematics across development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Examining the mutual relations between language and mathematics: A meta-analysis.

The relation between mathematics vocabulary and mathematics performance among fourth graders

The purpose of the present study is to clarify the contributions of cognitive skills (nonverbal reasoning, language comprehension, working memory, attention, processing speed) and academic skills (mathematics facts retrieval, mathematics computation, mathematics vocabulary, reading comprehension) in performing mathematics word problems among elementary school students. With the two-stage meta-analytic structural equation modeling approach, I synthesized 112 correlation matrices from 98 empirical studies (N = 111,346) and fitted the hypothesized partial mediation model. Overall, path analysis indicated that language comprehension, working memory, attention, mathematics vocabulary, and mathematics computation were unique predictors of word-problem solving. Subgroup analysis demonstrated different unique predictors for younger and older students to perform word problems (K-2nd grades versus 3rd–5th grades). Implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Xin Lin

Papers

A meta-analysis on the relation between fluid intelligence and reading/mathematics: Effects of tasks, age, and social economics status.

The relation between mathematics anxiety and mathematics performance among school-aged students: A meta-analysis.

Examining the mutual relations between language and mathematics: A meta-analysis.

The relation between mathematics vocabulary and mathematics performance among fourth graders

Investigating the Unique Predictors of Word-Problem Solving Using Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling