Exploring the phenomenon of distance in children’s interactions with touchscreen digital mathematics games

ABSTRACT

This study examines the construct of distance – the degree of difficulty of interacting with something – as part of activity involving children using touchscreen digital games to learn mathematics. Ten fifth-grade children engaged in video-recorded semi-structured task-based interviews in which they used two touchscreen digital mathematics games on a touchscreen tablet and responded to semi-structured follow-up questions. Qualitative data analysis was iterative, featuring analytic memoing and eclectic coding techniques to identify themes related to distance. In advanced coding stages, magnitude coding was used to characterize the degree of distance present. Findings provide evidence of the presence of distance, changes in distance, and interactions between distance types throughout the activity. In particular, both mathematical distance and technological distance were present, changed in various ways, and often influenced each other. Implications include the relevance of distance for designing, implementing, and researching educational technology.

KEYWORDS:

• Distance
• educational technology
• mathematics
• digital games
• touchscreen

2010 MATHEMATICS SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION:

• 97 - Mathematics Education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.