Toys or Math Tools: Do Children’s Views of Manipulatives Affect Their Learning?

ABSTRACT

This research examined whether children’s construals of mathematical manipulatives – as toys or as tools for doing mathematics – influenced their learning from a lesson with the manipulatives. Children (grades 2 and 3) were presented with a set of buckets and beanbags, and they were either given no information about the manipulatives (control) or were told that the manipulatives could be used for playing a game, for doing mathematics, or both. The manipulatives were then used in a lesson about mathematical equivalence. Participants who were instructed to view the manipulatives as math tools performed better on measures of learning, transfer, and conceptual knowledge than did participants who were not instructed to view the manipulatives in this way.

Acknowledgements

We thank Tori Jay and Jana Hrovat for assistance with data collection, and we thank Tori Jay and Radha Jadoo for assistance with coding and establishing reliability.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Award #R305B090009 to the University of Wisconsin Madison. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the U.S. Department of Education.