Is er een verschil tussen de rekenvaardigheidsscores van autochtone- en allochtone leerlingen, vanwege de relatie tussen woordenschat en rekenvaardigheid?

Abstract

Aim: Several studies have been performed to examine school performance differences of immigrant children and autochthonous children. A lot of studies focus on the vocabulary of immigrant children and whether this is a predictor of lower school performance. Little consensus has been found on this subject. The goals of this research are to answer the question whether there is a difference in the early mathematical competence between immigrant- and autochthonous children and whether there is a significant relationship between mathematics and vocabulary. Method: A total of 444 participants between four and seven years were selected in sixteen regular primary schools in the Netherlands. The performance difference on the early mathematical competence between autochthonous and immigrant children were measured using the newest version of the Utrecht Early Numeracy Test [ENT-3]. The teachers of these children gave insight in the vocabulary skills of their pupils. Results: Results indicated that immigrant children significantly perform worse than autochthonous children. Besides this result, a regression analysis showed a significant relationship between early mathematical competence and vocabulary. Conclusion: The results showed a significant difference in the performance between autochthonous and immigrant children on both the early mathematical competence and vocabulary. Immigrant children performed significantly worse than their autochthonous peers. In general, it can be stated that the score of the vocabulary test can be seen as the most important predictor for the early mathematical competence. It can be concluded that ethnic minority preschoolers have a significantly lower score on the ENT-3, caused by a smaller Dutch vocabulary. There is no consensus about this in literature. Limitations and strengths and suggestions for future research are given.