The Assessment of Numerical Skills in Preschool Children
Eleonora Bonin, Daniela Lucangeli, Francesco Sella
This research aims to use the new BIN scale — Batteria Intelligenza Numerica (Numerical Intelligence Battery), which is a collection of tasks that assess basic components of mathematical learning, to observe the achievement criteria established by the Italian Ministry of Public Education for the end of preschool in the mathematics area. This study was part of a research project conducted to evaluate the functionality of the new BIN scale and to validate this test. The data collection involved a sample of preschool children. The analysis done on the achievement of the criteria defined by the Ministry of Public Education was aimed at understanding to what extent the various numerical skills are possessed by children in their last year of preschool and whether they are already possessed by children in their first two years. Regarding results analysis, a comparison was made for each task between the results of children attending, respectively, their first, second and third year of preschool. As expected, children in their third year of preschool have greater numerical knowledge, even though not all of them have shown that they have reached the criteria indicating the skills that should be possessed in the last year of preschool.
Keywords
Numerical cognition, BIN scale, Preschool, Numerical skills.
