Development of the Electronic Test of Early Numeracy

The project will develop and refine an electronic Test of Early Numeracy (e-TEN) in English and Spanish that will assess informal and formal knowledge of number and operations in domains including verbal counting, numbering, numerical relationships, and mental addition/subtraction. The overarching goal of the assessment design is to create a measure that is more accurate, more accessible to a wider range of children, and easier to administer than existing measures.

Full Description

The project will develop and refine an electronic Test of Early Numeracy (e-TEN) in English and Spanish, focused on number and operations. The assessment will incorporate a learning trajectory that describes students' development of the understanding of number. The electronic assessment will allow for the test to adapt to students' responses and incorporate games to increase children's engagement with the tasks. These features take advantage of the electronic format. The achievement test will be designed to be efficient, user-friendly, affordable, and accessible for a variety of learning environments and a broad age range (3 to 8 years old). The overarching goal of the assessment design is to create a measure that is more accurate, more accessible to a wider range of children, and easier to administer than existing measures. This project is funded by the Discovery Research Pre-K-12 Program, which funds research and development of STEM innovations and approaches in assessment, teaching and learning.

The e-TEN will assess informal and formal knowledge of number and operations in domains including verbal counting, numbering, numerical relationships, and mental addition/subtraction. The items will be designed using domain-based learning trajectories that describe students' development of understanding of the topics. The test will be designed with some key characteristics. First, it will be semi-adaptive over six-month age spans. Second, it will have an electronic format that allows for uniform implementation and an efficient, user-friendly administration. The test will also be accessible to Spanish speakers using an inclusive assessment model. Finally, the game-based aspect should increase children's engagement and present more meaningful questions. The user-friendly aspect includes simplifying the assessment process compared to other tests of numeracy in early-childhood. The first phase of the development will test a preliminary version of the e-TEN to test its functionality and feasibility. The second phase will focus on norming of the items, reliability and validity. Reliability will be assessed using Item Response Theory methods and test-retest reliability measures. Validity will be examined using criterion-prediction validity and construct validity. The final phase of the work will include creating a Spanish version of the test including collecting data from bilingual children using both versions of the e-TEN.

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