Research-Based Design and Use of Picture Books to Promote Children's Early Mathematical Learning: A Conceptual Model

Introduction

Children’s early mathematics achievement is an important predictor of their later understanding of mathematics (Duncan et al., 2007; Geary et al., 2018; Jordan et al., 2009; Nguyen et al., 2016). Researchers have therefore focused on ways to improve children’s early mathematics skills as a way of improving later outcomes. The home learning environment is one area that has received much focus because the home is the first significant context for children’s earliest development (Anders et al., 2012; Blevins-Knabe et al., 1996; Hornburg et al., 2021; Sénéchal et al., 1998; Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002). For this early environment, caregivers provide essential structure, with the activities they report doing at home relating to children’s skills and knowledge prior to the start of formal schooling (Anders et al., 2012; Burgess et al., 2002; Griffin & Morrison, 1997; Manolitsis et al., 2013; Purpura et al., 2020).

Book reading is one important activity that is a common part of the early learning environment at home or in school (Bus et al., 1995; Fitton et al., 2018; Flack et al., 2018; Mol & Bus, 2011; Xie et al., 2018). The interactions that occur as part of shared reading promote children's literacy skills by focusing their attention on the text and promoting a discussion around the material (Dowdall et al., 2020; Fitton et al., 2018; Flack et al., 2018; Mol et al., 2008). Shared book reading provides one important context, out of many activities within the home learning environment (e.g., cooking, verbal counting, playing games), where caregivers and children can interact in ways that promote children’s development. Importantly, because caregivers already read books as part of the early learning environment, incorporating mathematics into some picture books is an easy way to bring structured, mathematical talk to a familiar activity.

The focus of this chapter is on how the design and use of picture books can influence their effectiveness for promoting children’s early mathematics skills. Picture books refer to books that include both text and illustrations related to the text. There has been successful intervention work that shows picture books can be used to promote children’s early numeracy skills (Gibson et al., 2020; Green et al., 2018; Jennings et al., 1992; Mix et al., 2012; O’Rear & McNeil, 2019; Petersen et al., 2014; Purpura, Napoli et al., 2017; Purpura, Schmitt et al., 2021; Young-Loveridge, 2004). In this work, researchers focused on books because they provide a medium that can be easily structured to support attention and talk during the shared interaction. Experimenter-led work has shown that picture books can be used to promote early mathematics skills when the samples are largely composed of children from middle-socioeconomic status (SES) homes (Mix et al., 2012; Petersen et al., 2014; Purpura, Schmitt et al. 2021) as well as when the samples include children from lower-SES homes (O’Rear & McNeil, 2019; Purpura et al., 2017). At school, mathematical picture books can be used by educators to promote geometry (Casey et al., 2004) or numeracy (Jennings et al., 1992) skills at the whole-class level. Picture books are also important tools that teachers can use for improving children’s mathematics skills through one-on-one instruction (Young-Loveridge, 2004). At home, well-designed picture books can be used by parents to promote children’s mathematical language and broader numeracy skills (Purpura et al., 2021) as well as children’s counting and cardinality understanding (Gibson et al., 2020). Thus, there has been a wide range of research done to show that picture books can be important and effective tools for promoting children’s early mathematics skills.