Promoting number sense of Egyptian autistic children mainstreamed in kindergartens through visual scaffolding

ABSTRACT

The present study examines the effect of visual scaffolding on promoting number sense skills (including number recognition, counting, ordinality, comparison, and calculation) of Egyptian autistic children mainstreamed in kindergartens. The participants were five autistic children, enrolled in the second level of kindergarten (ages 5–6). Kindergarten Inventory of number sense was developed by the author in light of relevant previous studies. Pre- and post-tests were administered to participants. In between the two tests, the study group engaged in visual scaffolding activities designed to improve their number sense, using a strategy including a combination of scaffolding techniques integrated with multiple types of visual representations. A follow-up test was administered to the study group eight weeks after the completion of the activities. The findings suggest that children in the study group have higher number sense levels in the post-test, compared to pre-test, and they maintained the high levels in the follow-up test.

KEYWORDS:

• Number sense
• visual scaffolding
• Egyptian autistic children
• mainstreamed autistic kindergarteners

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Randa Abdelaleem Elmonayer, Ph.D., is an associate professor of child curriculum at Faculty of Education, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt.