Math anxiety is commonly known as negatively associated with math performance among students. Per the Cognitive-Attentional theory, a high anxiety level impedes recall and the working memory capacity, subsequently leading to lower performance. Using a large sample, Yu and colleagues conducted a study to examine whether the math anxiety-achievement link depends on gender. They hypothesized that the difference may be explained by emotional susceptibility which is the ability to experience and be influenced by emotions. Females are more sensitive to negative emotions, while males are more composed and less vulnerable. Moreover, neuroimaging indicates different emotional processing modes between genders. The study involved 28,129 grade 4 and grade 8 students from 489 primary schools and 238 secondary schools in Qingdao, China. The researchers measured the students' math anxiety using an abbreviated Math Anxiety Rating Scale and math performance using a researcher compiled multiple set of tests in May 2018. The results...

Chan and colleagues examined the impact of two game-based technologies on conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and procedural flexibility in algebraic equation solving. Two different game-based technologies are DragonBox Algebra 12+ (DragonBox) and From Here to There! (FH2T). DragonBox is a commercial app in which students move and combine pictures on the screen to isolate a box containing a dragon, similar to solving for x in algebraic equations. FH2T is a researcher-developed game in which students transform mathematical expressions from a start state (e.g., 16x29) to a specified goal state (e.g., 16x30 - 16x1) using gesture actions (e.g., tapping, dragging) on screen. Both games are based on the idea that an individual perceives mathematical symbols as objects in space and both provide immediate feedback during the game. While the designer of DragonBox disguises the algebraic symbols under images, the designer of FH2T presents algebraic notations in the game. The sample was...

Instructors of an undergraduate course teaching instructional methods to future secondary science teachers conducted a qualitative study analyzing the experience of suddenly switching teaching rehearsals to an online format. Half of the fifteen preservice teachers in the course were able to practice being teachers in in-person rehearsals with peers before the course switched to a virtual format in March 2020. The other half were only able to practice in rehearsals online. Little consensus exists on how best to teach pedagogical methods for rigorous and equitable teaching. Macroteaching is a format that entails 11-12 hours of practice teaching to peers as if teaching a full unit to a class of secondary students. These extended opportunities for rehearsal, feedback, and collaborative reflection are intended to build preservice teachers’ pedagogical skills and instructional vision, making it more likely that new teachers will attempt techniques for rigorous and responsive teaching in the first few...

A study conducted by Fuchs and colleagues looked at the effectiveness of interventions that combine training on working memory (WM) and word-problem solving (WPS). The four interventions were as follows: Intervention 1 – general training on WM Intervention 2 – training on WPS without WM training Intervention 3 – training on WPS with math-specific WM training Control group – no intervention General WM training consisted of sessions using verbal and visuospatial modalities, to which the authors added 5 minutes on mathematics practice. The WPS intervention used in the study was Pirate Math that consists of four phases in each session: arithmetic problems, word-problem solving with a tutor, games, and practice. Finally, math-specific WM training was developed by the authors to support students in applying their working memory capacity in mathematics. A randomized study evaluated the effects of the interventions on academic outcomes of students with math difficulties in second grade....

A meta-analysis published in the Learning Disabilities Journal has synthesized the findings of interventions designed to improve the mathematics achievement of secondary school students with mathematics difficulties (MD). A group of nine researchers performed a systematic literature review focusing on mathematics interventions targeting two categories of students having a MD: students with a documented disability under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) (i.e., math LD) and students with persistent low mathematics achievement at the secondary level. The authors identified 45 studies that met their inclusion criteria reporting findings for 49 interventions from which 139 effect sizes were extracted and used for the meta-analysis. They obtained a positive, statistically significant mean effect of +0.52 (p < .001), suggesting that the math interventions were generally effective. In terms of moderators of treatment effects, the results of meta-regression found significant effects for two intervention characteristics (i.e., including content domain and intervention duration),...

Most RCT studies stop at the post-test stage, without follow-up observations. Stephens and colleagues conducted a study to examine if an early algebra intervention influenced later learning. Participants were 1,455 students from 46 elementary schools. Seven hundred and sixteen students were from 23 treatment schools that used an early algebra intervention for 18 one-hour lessons per year from third through fifth grade during regular math class. The rest were from 23 control schools. All the students moved to a new middle school in grade 6. Students completed an 11-item written assessment before and after the intervention. Overall, the treatment group (M = 47.51% correct, SD = 21.54%) did better than the control group (M = 37.93% correct, SD = 19.74%) in the initial year of the intervention. However, the gap between the two groups narrowed from Grade 5 to Grade 6. Control students experienced an overall increase in performance from...

A recent meta-analysis published in the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness studied the effects of PreK-12 mathematics interventions in the U.S. from the 1990’s to 2017 with the aim of examining the characteristics of the studies that contribute to the effect heterogeneity. The criteria to select the studies were broad in order to do a comprehensive review of randomized studies on mathematics intervention, written in English, and conducted in the U.S. Therefore, the authors included studies with different methodological qualities (e.g., types of measure, attrition rate, baseline equivalence) and attempted to control for these factors in the analysis. A total of 191 studies met the inclusion criteria, with a mean effect size of +0.31. There was substantial heterogeneity, with a 95% prediction interval (range of 95% of true effect sizes) of -0.60 to +1.23. To explain the heterogeneity, the authors tested blocks of moderators. After testing each block independently,...

Gender stereotypes in math, which refers to the belief that men have superior math ability than women, can harm female students' math competence beliefs. Similarly, students’ beliefs that math ability is inborn and does not change much with effort (fixed mindset) can weaken their competence beliefs. Lee and colleagues investigated the impact of two interventions on parents and students’ math beliefs. A sample of 467 grade three and grade four students (mean age = 9.43 years, 53.3% girl) in 20 classes and their parents (over 88% mothers) at three elementary schools in Korea were randomly assigned in class units to intervention (11 classes) and control conditions (9 classes). The intervention was divided into two parts, one for parents (Intervention-P) and the other for students (Intervention-S). In Intervention-P, parents of the intervention group received two letters each week for three consecutive weeks from August to September, while parents in the control...

A recent pretest-training-posttest study of three-year-old numerical development by Orrantia and colleagues provides insight on the role of finger patterns in the acquisition of cardinality. The study consisted of 51 children randomly assigned to one of two separate classrooms, each with a similarly qualified teacher. The instructional technique practiced in the first classroom consisted of the teacher first labeling a set’s quantity on flashcard for the class, then having the class count the set aloud while the teacher pointed to each item, and finally having the children point to their own cards, count, and label. The authors identified this as the label-count-label (LCL) condition and effectively used this classroom as the control group. The technique in the second classroom followed the same pattern, but each step was supplemented with the teacher and students holding up the corresponding number of fingers for each quantity, which the authors identified as the LCL-plus-finger...