Response to a Specific and Digitally Supported Training at Home for Students With Mathematical Difficulties.

Anna Maria Re,Daniela Lucangeli,Martina Pedron,Silvia Benavides-Varela,Maria Antonietta De Gennaro

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02039

Abstract

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a shortened, specialized, and digitally supported training program for enhancing numerical skills in primary and secondary school children with mathematical difficulty (MD). The participants (n = 57) were randomly assigned to two groups: for the experimental group, the tasks were differentiated and adapted to each student’s learning profile. Moreover, children of this group used a Web App (i.e., “I bambini contano” or “Children count” in English) for improving arithmetic fact retrieval at home; for the control group, the difficulty of the activities was graded according to the school curriculum, and this group did not use the Web App. Pre‐ to post-training measurements showed that children of the experimental group had an improvement significantly higher than the control group, in particular in arithmetic facts and written calculation. Moreover, a follow-up evaluation indicated that the efficacy of the experimental training program lasted up to 2 months after the intervention. The results indicate that a specialized face-to-face intervention along with a digitally supported training at home can benefit children with mathematical learning difficulties.

Highlights

3–8% of school-age children have a diagnosis of mathematical difficulty (MD; Shalev et al, 2000; Desoete et al, 2004; Nelson and Powell, 2017)
Starting from the results of previous studies, according to which a training program has to be tailored on the basis of the student’s mathematics learning profile in order to be effective (Re et al, 2014), we have developed a Web App for arithmetic facts that allows children to practice on their own at home and reduce the number of sessions they have to attend followed by an specialist
Our hypothesis is that, maintaining the structure of the training program with activities tailored on the basis of the child’s mathematical learning profile and using the Web App “I bambini contano” for practicing arithmetic facts at home, we could obtain positive improvements in several mathematical areas and especially in arithmetic facts, and at the same time reducing the number of face-to-face sessions

Summary

Introduction

3–8% of school-age children have a diagnosis of mathematical difficulty (MD; Shalev et al, 2000; Desoete et al, 2004; Nelson and Powell, 2017). These students obtain poor results in mathematics, are at risk for math failure, and have difficulty performing several tasks, such as processing number sets, counting, and fact retrieval (Geary et al, 2012). Students with MD consistently performed lower than typically developing children across skills (i.e., counting, retrieving facts, fraction comparison and estimation, and applied problem-solving). From a recent review of the literature (Nelson and Powell, 2017), it emerges that targeted interventions and early recognition of math difficulty are fundamental in order to reduce the risk of poor secondary and adulthood outcomes, highlighting the importance of addressing

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