Effects of a Cognitive Acceleration Programme on Year 1 pupils (Updated)
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Thinking skills
What did the research show?
From statistical analysis of the results of tests on the children, the authors found that:
- overall the experimental group made significantly greater gains in cognitive development over the period of the study than the control group;
- while boys made gains, they were not as great as those made by girls;
- cognitive gain did not seem to be related to pupils’ linguistic or numeric abilities; and
- cognitive gain did not correlate with age of entry, receipt of free school meals or ethnic group.
The analysis was based on the gains made by each child in scores on pre- and post-tests of cognitive development. The authors were careful to assess the possible effects of variables other than the intervention itself. They did this partly by the use of baseline testing for language and number and partly by examining social and demographic pupil data. (Click to How was the research designed? for more information on how the results were analysed.)
Of particular interest to the researchers was the possibility of a teacher effect, beyond that of the intervention itself. The researchers wished to demonstrate that the intervention could be effective in the hands of a high proportion of the teachers who have been introduced to it. If the effects were confined to only three or four of the fourteen teachers the results would not be convincing. Detailed analysis showing that the gains were not limited to just a few teachers as well as the benefit to the pupils is discussed later in this digest.
