Category: Journal Articles

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Jo Boaler (1998) examined a math class in two different schools in England. One school, Amber Hill, was very traditional, textbook heavy and procedural while the other, Phoenix Park, was more open ended in the math classroom. Boaler conducted an ethnographic study of these two classes over the course of 3 years and throughout her time conducted various assessments to see where they were at with their learning. Boaler explained that the demographic in both schools was basically the same, but their teaching styles were different. Phoenix Park had a philosophy in the math classroom that believed students should work through real-world problems that require the math they are learning and in doing so, they will understand the concept well. This led to Phoenix Park presenting open-ended real life math problems to its students and Boaler found that they scored better on her assessments than the students at Amber Hill. This article again, shows that working through real-life examples promotes mastery of the concepts over memorizing steps.

Reference:

Boaler, J. (1998). Open and Closed Mathematics: Student Experiences and Understandings. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 29(1), 41–62. https://doi.org/10.2307/749717

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Juan Garzon and Julian Bautista did a case study with 40 first year engineering students in Columbia who were taking an algebra course. They presented virtual algebra tiles for a random set of 20 of them to use and recorded their understanding of the concepts and their long-term retention compared to the other 20 students who were given a traditional lecture. They found that the students who used the virtual algebra tiles learned the concept better and long-term retention increased.

Reference:

Garzón J, Bautista J. Virtual Algebra Tiles: A pedagogical tool to teach and learn algebra through geometry. J Comput Assist Learn. 2018; 34: 876–883. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12296