Early intervention of Malay preschool teachers in promoting children’s mathematics learning

Abstract

The study focused on improving kindergarten teachers’ ability to nurture early numeracy development and learning in K2 children. An intervention involving the experimental group included teachers who had already attended in-service training, as part of the initial pilot project, to assist them to understand pedagogical principles, practices and strategies to assist children’s development of numeracy skills, problem solving and reasoning. Further teacher guidelines, detailed lesson plans and mentorship were also provided on how to implement this in the classroom. <br> The research adopted a pre-test and post-test mixed-methods design involving an experimental group and a control group, comprising preschool children from five classes (N=221). Intact classes were matched to treatment and control conditions on the basis of Mendaki selection and centre choice of participation.<br> Findings from the Math reasoning subtest of the (WIAT) Wechsler Individual Achievement (Test 2) and the (NCT) Numeracy Concept Test – a non-standardised test, showed that even though that at pre-test, the experimental groups were better on the WIAT and that they were similar on the NCT, both groups improved on the WIAT at post-test but the experimental groups maintained their superior performance on the post NCT. Improvements within experimental groups were also noted.