Improving Struggling Fifth-Grade Students’ Understanding of Fractions: A Randomized Controlled Trial of an Intervention That Stresses Both Concepts and Procedures

Abstract

Using a randomized controlled trial, we examined the effect of a fractions intervention for students experiencing mathematical difficulties in Grade 5. Students who were eligible for the study ( n = 205) were randomly assigned to intervention and comparison conditions, blocked by teacher. The intervention used systematic, explicit instruction and relied on linear representations (e.g., Cuisenaire Rods and number lines) to demonstrate key fractions concepts. Enhancing students’ mathematical explanations was also a focus. Results indicated that intervention students significantly outperformed students from the comparison condition on measures of fractions proficiency and understanding ( g = 0.66–0.78), number line estimation ( g = 0.80–1.08), fractions procedures ( g = 1.07), and explanation tasks ( g = 0.68–1.23). Findings suggest that interventions designed to include explicit instruction, along with consistent use of the number line and opportunities to explain reasoning, can promote students’ proficiency and understanding of fractions.

Measuring Fences and Sharing Pizzas: Current Advances in Nonsymbolic Fraction Interventions

“…The goal of this paper was to offer a systematic review of recent intervention and training studies that have used nonsymbolic representations of proportions to promote students' fraction knowledge and relate these results to theories regarding the role of nonsymbolic and symbolic understanding in rational numbers. We identified 19 papers, (Barbieri et al, 2020;Dyson et al, 2020;Fuchs et al, 2016;Jayanthi et al, 2021;Malone et al, 2019). The improvements of these interventions resulted in medium-tolarge effect sizes (Cohen's d 0.60) in skills like fraction magnitude understanding and fraction arithmetic when comparing to children's performance in business-as-usual control groups.…”

“…Papers in this category involved longduration interventions in students' classrooms, that were typically conducted by trained teachers. First, we focused on the six papers that employed numberlines as their primary instructional tool (Numberline Interventions, Figure 2), in which participants were students who had already received some fraction instruction (Barbieri et al, 2020;Bush, 2021;Dyson et al, 2020;Fuchs et al, 2016;Jayanthi et al, 2021;Malone et al, 2019). Then, we described one paper that centered on developing an understanding of proportional magnitudes using nonsymbolic representations of children who have not received fraction instruction, (Nonsymbolicto-Symbolic Intervention, Figure 2) (Abreu-Mendoza et al, 2021).…”

Intraclass Correlations for Evaluating the Effects of Teacher Empowerment Programs on Student Educational Outcomes

“…Because there has been little published information about sampling costs in specific experiments, we consider several hypothetical sets of cost structures to demonstrate how optimal sample allocation and required sample size vary across grades and achievement domains. However, these hypothetical values are loosely grounded on several programs that we evaluated through relevant publications (Griffin et al, 2018; Jacob et al, 2015; Jayanthi et al, 2017; Springer et al, 2011).…”

Working Together: Leveraging Teacher Study Groups to Improve Social and Emotional Learning in the Classroom

“…In this way, TSGs enhance instruction and learning transfer (Joyce & Showers, 2002). The use of TSGs is a research-based professional development approach for building teacher capacity for effective classroom practices (Cunningham et al, 2015;Jayanthi et al, 2018). Research shows that online collaborative teacher professional learning groups are better than in-person groups for engaging participants in reflective practice (Darling-Hammond et al, 2017;Lay et al, 2020).…”