Do predictors of school readiness explain Grade 1 mathematics abilities equally in monolingual children and same-aged dual language learners?

Bühler, J.C.¹, Grob, A.¹, Niklas, F.², Segerer, R.K.^1
1University of Basel: Division of Personality and Developmental Psychology, Missionsstrasse 62, 4055, Basel
²Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Pädagogische Psychologie und Familienforschung, Leopoldstrasse 13, 80802, München

 

Submission type

Poster only

Scheduled

Hallway, 10-07-2019, 15:30 - 17:00

Keywords

dual language learners, school precursor skills, mathematics, cognitive advantage, school readiness

Summary

Many children from migration-background families grow up exposed to two languages (i.e., as dual language learners, DLLs) and show disadvantages in language- and math-specific domains compared to their monolingual peers in early school grades (e.g., PISA-Assessment, 2000). This is likely driven by weaker school-language proficiency. However, a handful of studies have reported “bilingual-advantage-effects” for DLL-children in terms of attentional control and metalinguistic awareness, which potentially can be translated into benefits for some domain-specific mathematical tasks (e.g., Daubert & Ramani, 2019; Kempert et al., 2011).

Using a data-subset from the longitudinal study “Das schulreife Kind” (N=391; Hasselhorn et al., 2015), we found that monolingual children outperformed DLL-children in all examined preschool language-related and math precursor tasks and on subtasks of the DEMAT-1+, a standardized Grade 1 math-test-battery.

Multiple regressions, which accounted for the children’s social background and preschool (language-/math-related) precursor skills, revealed a positive effect of DLL on later mathematical achievements. However, this effect was limited to tasks that required the integration of linguistic and numerical competences, e.g., for worded math-problems. Yet, this effect was not observed in purely numerical arithmetic tasks. These (and additional) results are discussed and juxtaposed within the debate relating to cognitive advantages of DLL.

Auteurs