Development of calculation abilities in middle- and low-income children after formal instruction in school

Abstract

This study provides follow-up data on the development of calculation abilities in middle- and low-income children after formal instruction in first grade. Two conventional verbal calculation tasks (story problems, number-fact problems) and one nonverbal calculation task were used. Before formal instruction, middle-income kindergarten children performed better than low-income kindergarten children on both verbal calculation task, but the two income groups did not differ in performance on the nonverbal calculation tasks (Jordan, Huttenlocher, & Levine, 1992). After formal instruction in first grade, there still were no income group differences on the nonverbal calculation tasks. Moreover, there no longer were income group differences on number-fact problems. This finding was associated with the development of more effective calculation strategies among the low-income children. However, on story problems low-income children still performed more poorly than middle-income children. The findings show that even after formal instruction low-income children have difficulties with certain verbal arithmetic tasks.