M. Constanza Ayala, young researcher of our Nucleus, will participate in the Second MEMAT Research Colloquium, where she will present: "Socioeconomic disadvantage in different areas of mathematics achievement: new findings with the ELPI Survey.".
This presentation will address the first findings of the MEMAT team's work in research line 3, where the trajectories of future mathematical learning are studied in relation to socioeconomic disadvantages through the analysis of databases of the Chilean educational system.
The activity will be held on Thursday, September 29 at 10:00 a.m. in the SEA Room of the UC Faculty of Education at the San Joaquin Campus.
To register and participate via Zoom, please visit the following link:
Register hereReview of the presentation:
Mathematical skills are fundamental to understand the schooling trajectories of children and adolescents. These skills, which are developed from early stages of life (Harwell et al., 2017), show differences associated with socioeconomic level (SES) (Chmielewski, 2019). In any case, the evidence is mixed regarding whether this gap increases, is maintained or decreases over time (Cerda et al., 2014; Jordan et al., 2009). The main objective of this research is to provide new evidence on the evolution of the relationship between socioeconomic status and performance in different mathematical skills of children from first to seventh grade in a context of high social stratification.
The analytical sample consists of 10,639 children aged 7 to 12 years (49% girls) from the third wave (2017) of the Chilean Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey (ELPI). Three subtests of the Woodcock-Muñoz Battery III Achievement Tests (Muñoz-Sandoval et al., 2005) were used to measure mathematical performance: Applied Problems, Mathematical Fluency and Calculus. From linear regression analysis, the initial results show that there is a socioeconomic gap close to 0.2 standard deviations in mathematics achievement for all three tests. Only in Calculus does the gap increase as children get older. These findings suggest that the tests measure mathematical skills that are differentially impacted by SES along the schooling trajectory. The results will be discussed in light of the factors that could explain these gaps in the different math skills.
