Investigation of the effects of mathematics-themed story reading interventions on language and early mathematics skills of 4-6 yers old children

The current study aims to explore the effects of math-themed story books read with different techniques on the language and early math skills of children aged 4-6 years. The study group consisted of 88 children aged 4-6 years and 22 parents from four different classes attending an independent kindergarten affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in Denizli province. From the four classes, one class was randomly selected as the experimental 1 group (DR Teacher-22 children), one class as the experimental 2 group (DR Parent-22 children), one class as the experimental 3 group (TR Teacher-22 children) and one class as the control group (22 children). The study was conducted using a nested design, which is one of the mixed-method studies in which quantitative and qualitative methods are used together. In the quantitative phase of the study, a paired pretest-posttest control group design was used, and in the qualitative phase, a basic qualitative research design was used. Within the scope of the study, teachers in the first experimental group and parents in the second experimental group received three sessions of online dialogic reading instruction. The teacher in the first experimental group and the parents in the second experimental group read the math-themed storybooks 3 times a week for 8 weeks using the dialogic reading technique, while the teacher in the third experimental group used the traditional reading technique. All children in the experimental and control groups were administered Test of Early Language Development Third Edition: Turkish (TELD-3) and the Test of Early Mathematics Ability-3 (TEMA-3) before starting the intervention, and natural language sample was taken from the children to determine their mean length of utterences and the frequency of their use of mathematical concepts through the Mathematics Concepts Usage Frequency Record Form (MCF). At the end of the eight-week intervention, the same tests were administered again and natural language samples were taken. Quantitative data were analyzed with ANOVA tests and paired sample t-test for TEMA-3 and OSU values, t-test for MCF, Kruskal Wallis, Mann Whitney U tests and Wilcoxon signed-rank test for TEDİL-3 data. Qualitative data were analyzed by content analysis. As a result of the study, it was determined that there was a statistically significant increase in the receptive language, expressive language and total language development scores of the children in the dialogic reading groups. In addition, there was a statistically significant increase in the early math skills scores of the children in both the dialogic reading groups (DR Teacher-DR Parent) and the traditional reading groups (TR Teacher). Children in the traditional reading and control groups showed an increase in their expressive language scores and mean lenght utterences. Qualitative data showed that both in the dialogic reading group teachers and parents had positive views that the program supported children's language and early mathematics skills, created awareness in the context of supporting mathematics skills through reading techniques and stories, and increased parent-child interaction. On the other hand, it was found that children participated in the dialogic reading process with pleasure and found dialogic reading fun and instructive. These results show that the dialogic reading technique is effective in increasing children's language skills and reading math-themed story books support children's early math skills.