IDENTIFYING NEEDS IN THE MATH CLASSROOM: UNDERSTANDING THE EFFECTS OF ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EVENTS

Abstract

Two of every three students in the classroom today are affected by at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE; Perfect et al., 2016). Recently, researchers have used a neurodevelopmental approach to try to categorize and describe the connection between the neurological, cognitive, and academic success of children with ACEs and may have discovered a unique connection to math (Blodgett & Lanigan, 2018). The culmination of this research suggests that children who experience ACEs develop a stress physiology (as evidenced by differences in brain volume and cortisol levels) and this affects executive functioning. Because executive functioning, which is undergirded by the structural development of the brain (De Bellis et al., 2016), is related to mathematical academic achievement (Clark et al., 2010), children who have structural differences due to ACEs are hypothesized to have unique challenges in math. This study examined children drawn from an academic (rather than clinical) setting using behavioral measures of executive functioning as well as math grades obtained from their schools. Results suggest that for children drawn from a traditional academic setting, having been exposed to ACEs does not predict significant differences in EF skills or in school performance in math. Though the sample demonstrated a typical prevalence of exposure to ACEs, the maternal education of the children in the sample (a proxy for SES) was distinctly high. The interaction of these two aspects of this sample and their implications for the findings is discussed.