This article is from the archives of the UB Reporter.
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UB education research featured in Science

  • “Very young children have the potential to learn mathematics that is complex and sophisticated. Unfortunately, this potential is left unrealized for many children throughout the world.”

    Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama
    SUNY Distinguished Professor and Professor of Learning and Instruction, Graduate School of Education
By Charles Anzalone
Published: August 25, 2011

The research of UB faculty members Douglas H. Clements and Julie Sarama is featured in a special section of Science magazine focused on the value of educational programs for the earliest of childhood learners—children 2, 3 and 4 years old.

Effective early childhood education, the magazine states, can have a significant impact on many aspects of adult life, such as “your comfort with math or even the size of your paycheck.”

Identifying which education programs are the most effective is crucial to the nation’s education policy and can help guide parents. (Read their article here.)

Clements’ and Sarama’s “Building Blocks” pre-kindergarten mathematics program, funded by the National Science Foundation, is one program shown to be effective.

Indeed, the quantitative, spatial and logical reasoning competencies of mathematics form a cognitive foundation for thinking and learning across subjects, according to Clements’ and Sarama’s article. Given the importance of mathematics to academic success and to a nation’s economic success, all children need a robust knowledge of mathematics in their earliest years, the UB researchers say.

The good news is that all children can develop such mathematical knowledge and skill. Sarama and Clements have created educational interventions that have been shown to be effective in helping all children learn mathematics. These are structured around “learning trajectories”—research-based paths of learning based on a synthesis of research in cognitive and developmental psychology and mathematics education.

Building Blocks’ basic approach is finding the mathematics in, and developing mathematics from, children’s activity. The program’s curriculum was designed to help children extend and “mathematize” their everyday activities, from building blocks to art and stories to puzzles and games.

Clements and Sarama’s breakthrough work teaching very young at-risk children the fundamentals of math, using Building Blocks, has attracted attention from several national media outlets.

This includes a 2009 front-page story in The New York Times calling their work one of the few projects in the field of cognitive science to establish a successful track record. Clements’ and Sarama’s “Building Blocks” could “transform teaching from the bottom up,” the Times article stated.

“Doug and Julie are exceptional researchers,” says UB Graduate School of Education Dean Mary H. Gresham. “It’s wonderful that their work with these young children is being recognized outside of traditional educational journals. It’s really important research.”

Clements’ and Sarama’s research also has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Educational Studies.