King's College, London, UK.
Br J Educ Psychol. 2010 Sep;80(Pt 3):363-79. doi: 10.1348/000709909X482363. Epub 2010 Jan 13.
In the context of the British Government's policy directed on improving standards in schools, this paper presents research on the effects of a programme intended to promote the cognitive development of children in the first 2 years of primary school (Y1 & 2, aged 5-7 years). The programme is based on earlier work dealing with classroom-based interventions with older children at both primary and secondary levels of schooling.
The hypothesis tested is that it is possible to increase the cognitive ability of children by assisting teachers towards that aim in the context of mathematics. A corollary hypothesis is that such an increase would result in an increase in long-term school achievement.
The participants were 8 teachers in one local education authority (LEA) and 10 teachers in another. Data were analysed on 275 children present at Year 1 pre-test in 2002 and at long-term Key Stage 2 post-test in 2008.
Two intervention methods were employed: a Y1 set of interactive activities designed around Piagetian concrete operational schemata, and mathematics lessons in both Y1 and Y2 designed from a theory-base derived from both Piaget and Vygotsky.
At post-test in 2004, the mean effect sizes for cognitive development of the children - assessed by the Piagetian test Spatial Relations - were 0.71 SD in one LEA and 0.60 SD in the other. Five classes achieved a median increase of 1.3 SD. The mean gains over pre-test in 2002 for all children in Key Stage 1 English in 2004 were 0.51 SD, and at Key Stage 2 English in 2008 - the long-term effect - were 0.36 SD, an improvement of 14 percentile points.
The main hypothesis was supported by the data on cognitive development. The corollary hypothesis is supported by the gains in English. The implications of this study are that relative intelligence can be increased and is not fixed, and that children can be led into collaborating with each other to the benefit of their own thinking, and that there does exist a theory-based methodology for the improvement of teaching.
在英国政府提高学校标准政策的背景下，本文介绍了一项旨在促进小学头两年（Y1 和 Y2，年龄 5-7 岁）儿童认知发展的计划的研究结果。该计划基于早期在小学和中学阶段进行的基于课堂的干预工作。
检验的假设是，通过在数学方面帮助教师实现这一目标，有可能提高儿童的认知能力。一个推论假设是，这种提高将导致长期学业成绩的提高。
参与者是一个地方教育当局（LEA）的 8 名教师和另一个 LEA 的 10 名教师。数据分析基于 2002 年进行的 Y1 前测和 2008 年进行的长期关键阶段 2 后测中的 275 名儿童。
采用了两种干预方法：一组围绕皮亚杰具体运算图式设计的 Y1 互动活动，以及基于皮亚杰和维果茨基理论的 Y1 和 Y2 数学课程。
在 2004 年的后测中，儿童认知发展的平均效应大小——通过皮亚杰测试空间关系评估——在一个 LEA 中为 0.71SD，在另一个 LEA 中为 0.60SD。五个班级的中位数增加了 1.3SD。2004 年，所有儿童在关键阶段 1 英语中的平均收益是 2002 年的前测中增加了 0.51SD，而在 2008 年的关键阶段 2 英语中——长期效应——增加了 0.36SD，提高了 14 个百分点。
数据支持了关于认知发展的主要假设。推论假设得到了英语成绩提高的支持。这项研究的意义在于，相对智力可以提高，不是固定不变的，儿童可以被引导相互合作，从而提高自己的思维能力，并且确实存在一种基于理论的教学改进方法。
