Making the Building Blocks of Early Math Scalable, Accessible, and Viable for All Young Children and Their Teachers

This project will build an interactive and integrated curricular and professional development technological system: the Building Blocks Toolset (BBToolset). The BBToolset is designed to benefit all early childhood educators and their students. Young children will learn from engaging, effective digital educational games and face-to-face activities. Teachers will receive just-in-time professional development related to their students' development and guidance on curricular choices and culturally sensitive pedagogical strategies. The app builds on the research teams' prior work on the mathematical learning trajectories of young children. Learning trajectories are grounded in research on children's cognition and contain three interrelated components: a learning goal, a developmental progression of levels of thinking, and instructional activities that correlate to each level. Research-based curricular resources and professional development are not always available to underserved communities, and the pandemic has only exacerbated inequities based on income and race. Thus, all phases of research and development of the BBToolset will be conducted collaboratively with diverse communities. The project team will ensure equitable materials and access in three ways. First, the resources embedded in the learning trajectories activities will include extensive guides and just-in-time tips to promote culturally responsive enactment of digital and face-to-face activities. Second, teaching approaches and strategies will be included that are known to promote engagement, learning, and identification for specific marginalized populations, including support for multilingual learners. Third, all components are designed to be accessible using Universal Design for Learning and incorporating adaptations for children with disabilities.

The research team will use the curriculum research framework from prior work for the development and both formative and summative evaluation of the BBToolset, paying particular attention to how much its use increases engagement and learning for children and teachers. The work will also ensure that all children, primarily from underserved populations, benefit fully. In formative phases, the research and development will include focus groups, surveys, and system data involving teachers and children. Analyses of detailed data from thousands of participants will guide the ongoing refinement of the BBToolset system and the formative assessment components of learning trajectories. The developmental progressions will be assessed and refined, as will the instructional activities (including digital educational games). In summative phases, the project will utilize an experimental research design within classrooms and across the entire project populations. Data will be analyzed with hierarchical linear modeling to evaluate the efficacy and effectiveness of the intervention. The project will provide teachers with a validated resource that does not require substantial initial or additional work. The empirical work also will validate formative assessment as a powerful element of the instructional process and provide researchers with extensive data and a tool they could use to collect new data. Thus, the project will contribute to advancing knowledge in cognition, curriculum, and the scale-up of educational innovations through technology.