Engaging Family and Community Members to Foster Children's Mathematics Learning Using Tablets

• In Event: Beyond Traditional Family Engagement: Building Educational Communities to Foster Students' Academic Success and Social Cohesion

Abstract

1) This paper aims to analyze how learning environments using ICT (tablets) can be created to foster mathematics learning in a classroom of 6th graders. We draw on Interactive Groups (IGs) a classroom organization that aims to address some limitations of previous research on collaborative learning in small groups.

2) IGs are a type of classroom organization based on heterogeneous ability groups, facilitated by volunteers (adults or older students) (Valls & Kyriakides, 2013) who are family and/or other community members. According to previous literature small grouping may help students to better understand mathematics, since there are more opportunities for them to interact with peers, solving their troubles (Garcia-Carrión & Díez-Palomar, 2015; Vygotsky, 1978). However, small grouping without guidance may fail to improve students’ performance, especially when using ICT (tablets) because children tend to focus on the tool and forget the task. For this reason, we explore IGs as a didactical framework that can create learning environments favorable to improve students’ mathematics learning, using tablets.

3) & 4) This paper is based on one case study. We collected evidence on students’ grades before and after the intervention. We used videotape to record interactions during the IGs once a week, during the whole second semester of 2014-2015 (four months). All data has been transcribed for further analysis. We used EXCEL and Transana to analyze both quantitative (grades) and qualitative (recording) data.
The research questions are: Does the presence of a family or community member facilitating the IG change the nature of children’s interactions when using tablets with problem solving activities? If so, can this change lead children to improve their mathematics achievement?

5) Students participating in the study significantly improved their grades in mathematics. The high performing children increased from 9.1% (2014) to 22.7% (2015), whereas the ones obtaining low scores decreased from 45.5% (2014) to 9.1% (2015). The analysis of the qualitative data suggests a clear break in terms of students’ focus on the mathematical tasks before and after adopting a new protocol to organize the class. Before introducing the tablets, all children were involved together in the resolution of the tasks. The first day we introduced the tablets, children failed in sharing their own ways to solve the activities, since most of them were ‘captured’ by the tablet, so that they stopped to work on the activities. After two sessions the volunteer(s) –usually a family or community member- was(ere) requested to ask children to read the text of the activity, and then ask children in their IG to share their work. Children turned back to justify their answers with validity [mathematical] claims. The rate of interaction increased dramatically again, after adopting the new protocol.

6) This study suggests that introducing ICT (as tablets) in a class of mathematics is not enough to guarantee productive learning. We need to set up ground rules to make sure that children engage in dialogic learning to maximize learning interactions. Family and community members’ role is crucial to engage children in productive dialogic talk.

Authors

• Javier Diez-Palomar, Universitat de Barcelona

• Silvia Molina Roldán, Universitat Rovira i Virgili