Little Learners, Math Skills, and a Whole Lot of Data: About TIME and the Possibilities for Parents

In pop-up research hubs across the Chicago area – including at the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the Chicago Children’s Museum – little learners are helping the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy’s Behavioral Insights and Parenting (BIP) Lab answer some crucial questions.

Are digital applications an effective method for teaching math to preschool-aged children? And how do these colorful and engaging digital tools stack up against traditional tools, such as peg number boards and counting games?

By the end of September, the BIP Lab hopes to have recruited 900 three- and four-year-olds, and their parents, to help with those answers for its About TIME (Technology in Math Education) study. Children of all income levels who speak English or Spanish are eligible to participate in the study in which they spend about 30 minutes in a learning session with a lab researcher. Families who take part receive a $40 gift card and sessions at museum partner sites come with complimentary museum and parking passes.

About TIME extends the core work of the BIP Lab, which aims to reduce social and economic inequality by helping parents help their children learn ­– particularly in the home environment. The study is the largest-scale recruitment and family partnership effort the lab has ever undertaken in the Chicago area, said the lab’s executive director, Michelle Michelini, MPP ’09.

“These About TIME learning sessions allow our research team to collect very systematic data on how children learn with digital and non-digital math materials,” Michelini said.  

“The study will also help to inform the broader questions we focus on surrounding how to help parents support their children’s learning,” she added. “And, with the shift to remote learning during the pandemic, there has definitely been invigorated interest from the policy community in better understanding the role of technology in kids’ learning and early education.”

Founded in 2014 and co-directed by Harris Professors Ariel Kalil and Susan E. Mayer, the BIP Lab is a popular draw for students interested in research because of its emphasis on helping children succeed and the unparalleled opportunities it offers. University of Chicago undergraduate and graduate students make up the bulk of the 40 research assistants working on About TIME.

“The most impactful thing that we can do as researchers is engage the community, get input, and make sure that what we're working toward is going to meet the needs of actual people. And I feel like my experience here at the BIP Lab has been exactly that,” said Brendon Krall, MPP Class of 2023 and an About TIME research assistant. “I'm super grateful that there are these kinds of experiential learning opportunities.”

Krall, who taught eighth grade in Houston before enrolling in Harris, has been spending much of his research time in western suburbs such as Cicero and Maywood. It has provided him with a wide array of experiences.

And it’s been a stark difference from his time in a middle-school classroom. “These three- and four-year-olds come in and they are ready to be themselves, just completely unabashed,” he said. “Whereas with eighth-graders, there's a lot of, you know, walls up.”

“I love working with children,” he added, “but I’m also thrilled to be learning about research methodology and applying it in the real world. Because I was hired at the outset of the study, I helped prepare for its implementation, looking at different coding mechanisms and strategizing about how to operationalize the research. That was absolutely phenomenal.” Krall is interested in pursuing a PhD.

One thing that makes the lab unique, said BIP Lab Project Manager Ana Arellano Jimenez, is that it does a lot of hand data collection. “This approach allows Harris students who are immersed in regression models and public policy theory while in the classroom to have the chance to go out into the field – the real world -- and see how the sausage is made,” she said.

Plus, the research work lets students explore Chicago. “The studies take them everywhere. We're in Pilsen, we're in Lincoln Park, we’re in Chicago Heights. So, through these research assistantships, the students get to see the neighborhoods where their impact will be felt,” added Arellano Jimenez, who is project managing the About TIME initiative.

Aida Krzalic, a third-year undergraduate student on the Global Studies’ Law, Borders, and Security track, is a first-time BIP Lab research assistant. The About TIME experience, she explained, has expanded how she thinks about the effects of her actions and helped her improve basic problem-solving and interpersonal skills.

“This research is vital,” she said, “because it has a direct impact on the communities where we are doing this study. Parents want to know how to support their young children's math education. Our focus on parent interaction and digital vs. analog tools – two variables that are more accessible than private tutoring or preschool – means that any policy suggestions that come out of our findings will be feasible for parents across socioeconomic and linguistic backgrounds.”

To gather data, the BIP Lab has created 30-minute About TIME learning sessions that are divided into segments, said Arellano Jimenez. Each child first plays for 10 minutes with the research assistant on an iPad to assess the child’s numeracy skills. The play time that follows will either be with digital apps, or with manipulative items like a multicolored peg board or plush frogs that the child places on a scale to make it balance. No worksheets are used, she said.

Depending on the session, the parent may play along with their child, she said. Parents are asked to provide feedback afterward by filling out a questionnaire.

While the children have varying skill levels when it comes to the apps, Arellano Jimenez noted that researchers have found that the pre-COVID pushback against screen time has largely receded, and the lab is “capturing those changes and preferences.” 

“We’re definitely not advocates for more unqualified screen time, but this study will help us evaluate how best to use it to help children learn,” she said.

The About TIME study builds off of the BIP Lab’s earlier Math for Parents and Children Together (MPACT), an initiative to boost parents’ engagement in building their young child’s math skills. That work, which ended in 2020, in turn was built off learnings from the Parents and Children Together (PACT) project, which found ways to increase the amount of time low-income parents in the Chicago area spent reading to their three- and four-year-olds.

“Our research builds on what we’ve done before,” Michelini said. “We strive to replicate findings and produce answers to new, pressing questions that arise from our completed work.”

 After September, About TIME will transition to a randomized control trial that will last six months and provide selected families with either digital or non-digital learning tools, in this next phase of the research initiative.

“Ultimately,” Michelini said, “our hope is that the findings of this project will result in a set of recommendations for practitioners in early childhood education, for policymakers in the family and child policy arena, and for product developers, whether they are app developers or developers of learning materials that are non-digital.”

“There is a ton of learning that's going to come out of this,” she said.