Effectiveness in the development and acquisition of mathematical skills in children in rural and urban preschools

The aim of the research was to determine whether geometric skills of the children in rural preschools are at the same level as those of their peers in urban preschools. The research included 352 preschool-age children (5 to 7 years old) residing in Poland, both in cities and the countryside.The measurements were carried out in the Biała Podlaska Laboratory of Psycho-Motor Skills. A SensoMotoric Instrument (SMI) eye tracking device and the i ViewX platform registering data with a frame rate of 250 Hz were used. The device has a special measurement system which tracks and records eye movements in a sequence and at a pace of an analyzed person. With a view to demonstrate the differences between the correctness of task performance and the place of residence of the children, a Pearson's Chi-squared test was performed. To evaluate the differences in the time of task execution, a single factor analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the Student's t-test for independent samples were employed. In all of the analyzed cases, the level of statistical significance adopted was p=.05. The results of the research conducted on the studied group of children show that there are differences in the level of geometric skills between the children in rural and urban areas. It was established that a crucial factor which affected both the geometric knowledge and skills of the preschoolers were the place of residence, the age at which they started learning, and the duration of preschool education.