Teachers' Use of Cognitive Processing Language (CPL) in Mathematics Instruction

Undergraduates: Madison Chandler, Kesha Hudson

Faculty Advisor: Peter Ornstein
Department: Psychology & Neuroscience

---

The purpose of the present study was to examine teachers¿¿¿ use of cognitive processing language (CPL) as they teach language arts and mathematics. Instruction that is rich in CPL encourages the deep processing of material and metacognitive awareness and has been shown to facilitate first-grade students¿¿¿ strategy use in memory and math. More specifically, the question of whether teachers can be trained to increase their use of CPL during math instruction via a mid-year training session was explored. A total of 14 teachers and 87 students were recruited to participate in this study: eight teachers were assigned to the ¿¿¿experimental¿¿¿ condition (receiving the mid-year training) and six teachers were assigned to the ¿¿¿control¿¿¿ condition (delayed, end-of-year training). Previous findings from this area of research were replicated, showing that teachers vary naturally in the extent to which they incorporate CPL during math instruction. Furthermore, initial evidence was found to suggest that the use of CPL is malleable, such that teachers can be trained to use greater amounts of specific features of CPL. We are currently in the process of analyzing child-level outcomes to examine whether students whose teachers were (a) naturally high in their usage of CPL, or (b) showed increases in CPL after the mid-year training were more adept at using strategies to solve math problems and/or remember new information at the end of the first grade year than were their peers in low-CPL classrooms.