Understanding The Role of Executive functions in secondary mathematics learning

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In year 1 the student will develop and validate online versions of cognitive measures of domain-general & domain-specific EF skills (eg working memory: sentence & counting span tasks, Inhibition: numerical & and non numerical stroop tasks; shifting: rule switching tasks involving numerical & non-numerical rules) using the online version PsychoPY (Peirce, 2007) Year 7 students will complete online versions of these measures alongside traditional 1:1 testing measures to establish the test-retest & convergent reliability of the online measures. In years 2 to 3 the student will explore how performance on these measures is associated with mathematics progress. In an extensive two-year longitudinal study the online EF measures will be completed by subsets of the approximately 28,000 pupils whose mathematical progress is being assessed by NoMoreMarking's CJ assessment service. Pupils' conceptual understanding will be measured at the beginning & at the end of Years 7 & 8 using the CJ method. The student will collect online scores of domain specific and domain-general measures of EF skills through the course of Year 7. Analyses will explore the extent to which progress in mathematics across Year 7 can be EFs play a domain-specific vs. domain-general role, the predictive power of the domain-specific and domain-general versions of the EF tasks will be contrasted & comparable analyses on measures of progress in English conducted. The same pupils will repeat the EF assessments during Year 8 to investigate growth in EF skills over time and analyses will be conducted to explore the relationship between growth in EF skills and mathematics progress. Benefits to the student: Training in cognitive research methods and open science practices; Training in arranging and conducting research research community and wider community , A better understanding of why some pupils make greater progress in mathematics and what kinds of cognitive-based interventions might be best placed to assist those who make zero or negative progress; The development of a shareable validated battery of online EF measures.