Young Children's Mathematics Learning

Project Summary:
Young children’s mathematics skills are a unique predictor of their future academic achievement and adulthood career success. The project aims to examine how parents’ and teachers’ math input facilitates children’s math learning. The findings are expected to help identify effective ways to promote young children’s early math learning, and to support an emphasis in future parent and teacher education programs on incorporating math learning within meaningful parent–child and teacher-child interactions.

Deliverables:
An academic paper or a poster

Preferred discipline(s):
psychology, cognitive science, early childhood education, applied child development

Project Essential Skills:
interest in child psychology and willingness to work with young children and their teachers and parents

Other Selection Criteria (if any):
proficiency in spoken Cantonese, proficiency in English and Chinese reading and writing, interpersonal and communication skills, knack for accuracy and attention to details, and ability to work independently and as part of a team

Details of supervision arrangements:
The student will be required to stay with the project for at least six months to ensure sufficient training. The successful applicant will be requested to participate in weekly lab meetings. Individual meetings will be arranged when necessary. Moreover, the student will be requested to complete concrete tasks provided by the PI, such as developing, refining and administering child assessments, creating databases in SPSS, and running simple analyses.