EXECUTIVE SKILLS AND PROCEDURAL FLEXIBILITY IN MIDDLE SCHOOL MATHEMATICS

Abstract

As procedural flexibility, previously understood as adaptive reasoning, emerges as an important consideration in math skill development, it is important to account for executive functioning in that process as well, as executive functioning a well-researched factor in math performance. The current study, a secondary data analysis, explores how students rate themselves on the Executive Skills Questionnaire – Revised (ESQ-R), an informal executive skills measure, and how those scores relate to procedural flexibility scores, which accounts for students’ efficiency in math problem solving. Using the factor structure relevant to the current sample, which varies significantly from the current ESQ-R, findings indicate that procedural flexibility is lower in seventh grade when compared to sixth and eighth grades. Perceived executive skills vary positively across sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, indicating more perceived difficulties with executive skills as students move up in grade. Additional analyses explored the relationships between procedural flexibility and ESQ-R scores. Although there was no evidence of a significant relationship between procedural flexibility and ESQ-R scores, the relationship varied across grade level, yielding a negative relationship for sixth grade, a neutral relationship fore seventh grade, and a positive relationship for eighth grade. This pattern indicates that procedural flexibility may become more readily demonstrated, and possibly more valuable, as students gain mastery of skills and procedures and students may become more critical of their executive skills. Procedural flexibility is also highly sensitive to context and curriculum, based on the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics.