Project Activities
The researchers will develop and test a set of mathematics assignments for Grades 4 and 5 that includes examples of solved math problems designed to directly target key concepts and common student misconceptions, and practice problems for students to solve with prompts for student explanation.
Structured Abstract
Setting
Researchers will develop and test the intervention in suburban school districts in North Carolina, Illinois, and Massachusetts, and an urban school district in Maryland.
Sample
During the initial development phase of the project, two to three teachers per participating school district will help develop and refine the intervention. When testing the feasibility and promise of the intervention, 30 teachers and their students each in Grades 4 and 5 will participate in the study. Participating schools are diverse in their racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic characteristics.
Intervention
MathByExample materials will consist of seven blocks of assignments each for Grades 4 and 5. Each assignment block will consist of four to six individual assignments. The assignments will consist of approximately eight items, with items alternating between solved math problems and practice problems to solve. In a worked example, students are asked to study a problem solution rather than solve a problem themselves. Teachers will mark examples as incorrect or correct and this will be accompanied by prompts that target common misconceptions and errors. The assignments will be integrated into the regular routines of the classroom and existing teachers' practices. They can be administered individually or in groups as a do-now, pretest review, exit ticket, or post-lesson practice.
Research design and methods
An iterative development process will be used with feedback collected from teachers, mathematics experts, and students to inform revisions. In Year 1, each 5th grade assignment block will be tested with three pairs of participating teachers. Within each pair of teachers, one will be randomly assigned to participate in the MathbyExample condition, and the other teacher will be assigned to the control condition. Later in the school year, the teachers will implement a second study block, with the assignment to experimental and control conditions switched (e.g., the teachers in the MathByExample condition will now be in the control condition during the second study block and vice versa). During Year 2, the researchers will use the same methods to develop and test the Grade 4 assignments.
Control condition
The control condition for the pilot studies will be students receiving business-as-usual instruction and assignments in mathematics.
Key measures
Key student outcome measures include researcher developed measures assessing students' procedural and conceptual knowledge of mathematics concepts, an algebra readiness assessment. Other measures include released math items from the standardized tests used by the participating school districts, student motivation questionnaires, and classroom observations will also be used.
Data analytic strategy
Surveys and process data collected as part of the iterative development process will be analyzed using descriptive statistics. Data from the pilot study to assess the promise of the intervention will be analyzed using a two level hierarchical linear model with students nested within classrooms.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
Products: The products of this project include a set of assignments for Grades 4 and 5 targeting key mathematics concepts and common student misconceptions and teacher resources for implementing the assignments. Researchers will also produce peer-reviewed publications.
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
Book chapters
Booth, J.L (2017). Translating knowledge of children's thinking to improve education. In P. Lemaire (Ed.), Cognitive Development from a Strategy Perspective: A Festschrift for Robert Siegler.
Journal articles
Booth, J.L., McGinn, K.M., Young, L.K., & Barbieri, C. (2015). Simple practice doesn't always make perfect evidence from the worked example effect. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2 (1): 24-32. Full text
McGinn, K., Young, L., & Booth, J. (2019). Self-explanation prompts explained. Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom, 24(4), 18-22. Full text
Proceedings
McGinn, K.M., Booth, J.L., & Young, L. K. (2017). The interaction of worked-examples/self-explanation prompts and time on algebra conceptual knowledge. In Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2687-2692). Full text
Related projects
Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigator: Julie Booth (Temple University)
Pilot studies will be conducted in Year 2 for the developed Grade 5 MathByExample materials and in Year 3 for the developed Grade 4 MathbyExample materials. The pilot study will be a year-long randomized control trial in classrooms to test whether using the entire set of assignment blocks for Grades 4 and 5 will significantly improve student learning and algebra readiness. Thirty teachers and their students at each grade level will be randomly assigned to the MathbyExample condition or to the control condition. Data will be collected before, during, and after a set of assignments are administered.
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
