Teacher Language, Executive Function, and Students’ Strategy Use in Memory and Mathematics

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to examine teachers’ use of cognitive processing language (CPL), which facilitates high levels of processing and metacognition, as it relates to first-grade students’ strategy use in the context of memory and mathematics performance. In addition, child-level executive functioning (EF) is explored by studying the ways in which EF is associated with student performance in both of these domains. Finally, an effort is made to examine the interaction between EF and CPL so as to understand the joint effects of environmental and child-level variables in relation to students’ strategy use in memory and math. Data were collected over the course of one academic year from a sample of 14 teachers and 87 students in the form of classroom observations and individual child assessments. Following the coding of teacher instructional style and the scoring of child-level EF, two median splits were performed: teachers were classified as either “high-CPL” or “low-CPL,” and students were characterized as either “high-EF” or “low-EF.” Student outcomes on a memory and a math task were then analyzed as a function of both classroom environment and individual levels of executive functioning. Previous findings from this area of research were replicated, showing that teachers vary naturally in the extent to which they incorporate CPL during math instruction. Only one of the proposed hypotheses was supported by evidence: low-EF children in high-CPL classrooms outperformed low-EF students in low-CPL classrooms by the end of the year on one measure of memory strategy use. This study was an important step in the direction of studying the interplay between student-level and classroom-level factors that may interact in meaningful ways in the context of student performance.Bachelor of Art