Effects of Interventions with Manipulatives on Immediate Learning, Maintenance, and Transfer in Children with Mathematics Learning Disabilities: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Manipulatives are concrete or virtual objects (e.g., blocks and chips) often used in elementary grades to illustrate abstract mathematical concepts. We conducted a systematic review to examine the effects of interventions delivered with manipulatives on the learning of children with mathematics learning disabilities (MLD). The outcomes observed in the sample (N = 38) were learning, maintenance, and transfer in a variety of mathematical domains. Interventions using manipulatives were reported to be effective for a range of learning objectives (e.g., conceptual understanding and computational fluency), but several methodological weaknesses were observed. Analyses also highlighted considerable heterogeneity in the studies reviewed in terms of participant characteristics, intervention approaches, and methodology. We discuss overall effects of interventions with manipulatives in the MLD population, the methodological quality across the sample, and implications for practice.

Effects of Using Virtual Manipulatives for Students With Disabilities: Three-Level Multilevel Modeling for Single-Case Data

“…There was a statistically significant average immediate effect of using VMs in mathematical accuracy from the baseline to the intervention phase. This finding is consistent with previous syntheses of research on mathematics manipulatives Lafay et al, 2019;Peltier et al, 2020) or technology-mediated interventions (Kiru et al, 2018;Ok et al, 2020) in the use of VMs, which have been found to be generally effective for improving the mathematical outcomes of students with disabilities. These previous research included VMs as a subset of targeted mathematics interventions and validated the positive effects of using mathematics manipulatives or technology-mediated mathematics interventions.…”

“…Additionally, the use of VMs produced a significantly positive average trend during the intervention, indicating a growth over time due to the interventions incorporating VMs in their mathematics lessons. These findings add value to the existing syntheses and reviews on the effects of using VMs on students with disabilities Lafay et al, 2019;Peltier et al, 2020), particularly in terms of positive changes in trends and levels between the baseline and intervention phases.…”

“…More recently, other researchers Lafay et al, 2019;Peltier et al, 2020) reviewed studies of VM use in mathematics interventions that included the joint use of virtual and physical manipulatives for students with disabilities. Lafay et al (2019) synthesized 38 articles to examine the effects of different types of mathematics manipulatives (e.g., physical, pictorial, and virtual) and discovered considerable variations in the types of manipulatives. Bouck and Park (2018) noted an increase in VM use in the education field and found five of the 36 articles were about examining the academic effects of incorporating VMs (e.g., concrete-representationalabstract).…”

“…Despite the number of syntheses on technology implementation for mathematics interventions for students with disabilities (Kiru et al, 2018;Ok et al, 2020;Seo & Bryant, 2009) and syntheses on the use of mathematics manipulatives Lafay et al, 2019;Peltier et al, 2020), no previous meta-analyses have investigated the moderation effects of VMs on students with disabilities in terms of student characteristics and intervention features. To fill this gap in the literature, we implemented three-level multilevel modeling and analyzed the effects of VMs used by students with disabilities.…”

Using the Virtual–Representational–Abstract With Overlearning Instructional Sequence to Students With Disabilities in Mathematics

“…Learning for students with disabilities can be conceptualized in four phases: acquisition, fluency, maintenance, and generalization (Shurr et al, 2019). However, researchers generally pay greater attention to the acquisition phase rather than the maintenance phase while teaching mathematics (Lafay et al, 2019; Spooner et al, 2012). Given the limited existing research in which maintenance effects of mathematics interventions have been examined, it is not clear whether the teaching practices determined to be an EBP for acquisition are also evidence-based for maintenance (Lafay et al, 2019).…”