Impact of Small-Group Tutoring Interventions on the Mathematical Problem Solving and Achievement of Third-Grade Students With Mathematics Difficulties

Abstract

This intervention study compared the efficacy of small-group tutoring on the mathematics learning of third-grade students at risk for mathematics difficulty using either a school-provided standards-based curriculum (SBC) or a schema-based instruction (SBI) curriculum. The SBI curriculum placed particular emphasis on the underlying mathematical structure of additive problems to represent and solve word problems. At-risk students ( N = 136) from 35 classrooms scoring below a proficiency level on their district accountability assessment were assigned randomly to treatment groups. Results indicated interaction effects on the word problem-solving (WPS) posttest and retention tests such that SBI students with higher incoming (pretest) WPS scores outperformed SBC students with higher pretest scores, whereas SBC students with lower pretest scores outperformed SBI students with lower pretest scores. No effects were found on number combinations automaticity, and mathematics and reading achievement. Implications to improve the problem-solving performance of at-risk students are discussed.

Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Equivalence Tasks: The Influence of Symbols on Students with Mathematics Difficulty

“…In this article, we categorized students falling at or below the 21st percentile on Addition Fluency as students with MD. Typical cut‐scores for determining mathematics difficulty include students scoring at or below the 40th percentile (e.g., Jitendra et al., ), 32nd percentile (e.g., Martin et al., ), 25th percentile (e.g., Bryant et al., ; Fuchs et al., ), or 10th percentile (Geary, Hoard, Nugent, & Byrd‐Craven, ). Despite not having an agreed upon cut‐score in MD research, at or below the 21st percentile on fact retrieval based assessments is a stringent cut‐score in line with current literature.…”

A Synthesis of Elementary Mathematics Interventions: Comparisons of Students With Mathematics Difficulty With and Without Comorbid Reading Difficulty

“…For the MD-alone students, performance on a proximal measure was 0.46 in Jitendra, Dupuis, et al (2013). In Jitendra, Rodriguez, et al (2013), however, the proximal ES was 0.03.…”

“…Zhu (2015) defined MD-alone students as scoring above the 25th percentile on two reading tests. Without referring to percentiles, Jitendra, Dupuis, et al (2013) and Jitendra, Rodriguez, et al (2013) described students as scoring above an early second-grade benchmark on the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Reading test.…”

“…We judged the quality of these three studies at 0.89 ( SD = 0.05). In both the works by Jitendra, Dupuis, et al (2013) and Jitendra, Rodriguez, et al (2013), the authors implemented a 60-session word-problem intervention focused on increasing third-grade student word-problem performance by focusing instruction on word-problem schemas. Jitendra used the same criteria for identifying MD-alone in both studies: students scored below the 41st percentile on a mathematics test and above a beginning-of-second-grade reading level.…”

Mathematical Word Problem Solving in Students Elementary School: Is Schema-Based Instruction (SBI) or Cognitive Strategy Instruction (CSI) Used?

“…Schema based instruction [12,13] Cognitive strategy instruction [14,15] Explicit instruction provides students to use metacognitive not how to understand semantically. If it is seen that the type of problem the researcher aimed is non-routine in which the subject represents it visually (externally) and mentally (with and without gesture).…”