Not only children but also adolescents and adults encounter great difficulties in learning to reason proportionally. Despite these difficulties, research increasingly shows that proportional reasoning emerges early, before it is being instructed in school. There have however been very few attempts to stimulate this early emerging ability. The aim…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate the implementation of a researcher-created numberless word problem instructional unit designed to introduce second-grade students to word problems in the semantic category of "compare with the word more, smaller unknown." The 10-day instructional unit incorporated three elements:…

This study aims to examine the effect of the P4C curriculum on 5-6-year-old children's critical thinking through philosophical inquiry and their problem-solving skills. The study group included a total of 40 children learning in kindergartens at an elementary school in Çanakkale, Turkey. The study used a quasi-experimental model with the…

This study consists of a 17-year (2006-2021) systematic literature review on the effective instructional strategies for developing Computational Thinking (CT) in primary school students (K-5). The aim of this paper is to identify instructional strategies that have been implemented and evaluated by means of a pre- and post-test, with the aim of…

The aim of this research is to examine the effect of gamified STEM activities on 3rd and 4th grade students' intrinsic motivation, perception of problem-solving skills, and critical thinking disposition. In this mixed method study, problem solving skills perception scale, critical thinking disposition instrument and intrinsic motivation inventory…

What constitutes effective teaching of arithmetical skills in early school years is still uncertain. Finger use could play a crucial role in this acquisition, but some children do not use them spontaneously and studies would be necessary to know if it is possible to teach them. This research assesses the impact of a teacher-implemented…

Powell, Berry, et al. (in press) conducted a randomized control trial assessing the effects of two variants of word-problem intervention with third graders (n = 304) experiencing mathematics difficulty. Students were assigned to a business-as-usual condition (BaU) or one of two variants of word-problem intervention. One variant included a…

While programming was introduced to mathematics classrooms in the 1980s, emerging robotic technologies have encouraged more widespread integration of these technologies to support the development of K-12 students' mathematical reasoning. The recent emphasis of programming and computational thinking in K-12 education has highlighted the need to…

The purpose of this pilot study was to determine whether positive results from a word-problem intervention implemented one-to-one contributed to similar outcomes when implemented in small groups of three to four students. Third-grade students experiencing mathematics difficulty (n = 76) were randomly assigned to word-problem intervention (n = 56)…

This study's purpose was to investigate effects of 3 intervention approaches for building working memory (WM) and improving word-problem solving (WPS). Children with mathematics difficulties (n = 240; 7.51 years [SD = 0.33]) were randomized to 4 conditions: a control group, general WM training with contiguous math practice, WPS intervention…

Research has shown that the efficacy of learning with manipulatives (e.g., fingers, blocks, or coins) is affected by multiple variables, including the amount of guidance teachers provide during learning. However, there is no consensus on how much guidance is necessary when learning with manipulatives. The goal of this study was to examine the…

This study's purpose was to investigate effects of 3 intervention approaches for building working memory (WM) and improving word-problem solving (WPS). Children with mathematics difficulties (n = 240; 7.51 years [SD = 0.33]) were randomized to 4 conditions: a control group, general WM training with contiguous math practice, WPS intervention…

The main purpose of the study was to investigate K-2 children's development of computational thinking skills through an activity with Blue-Bot, a floor programmable robot. Twenty children between six and seven years old participated in the study. Children were engaged in problem-solving activities with the Blue-Bot to learn how to program it and…

Elementary school students struggle in interpreting the equal sign as a symbol denoting equivalence. Although many have advocated using a pan-balance scale to help students develop this understanding, less is known about what features associated with this model support learning. To attempt to control and examine these features, the investigators…

The purpose of this study was to explore the paths by which word-problem intervention, with versus without embedded pre-algebraic reasoning instruction, improves word-problem performance. Students with mathematics difficulty (MD; n = 304) were randomly assigned to a business-as-usual condition or one of two variants of word-problem intervention.…