title: Addressing the Math-Practice Gap in Elementary School: Are Tablets a Feasible Tool for Informal Math Practice?
abstract: Students rarely practice math outside of school requirements, which we refer to as the "math-practice gap". This gap might be the reason why students struggle with math, making it urgent to develop means by which to address it. In the current paper, we propose that math apps offer a viable solution to the math-practice gap: Online apps can provide access to a large number of problems, tied to immediate feedback, and delivered in an engaging way. To substantiate this conversation, we looked at whether tablets are sufficiently engaging to motivate children's informal math practice. Our approach was to partner with education agencies via acommunity-based participatory researchdesign. The three participating education agencies serve elementary-school students from low-SES communities, allowing us to look at tablet use by children who are unlikely to have extensive access to online math enrichment programs. At the same time, the agencies differed in several structural details, including whether our intervention took place during school time, after school, or during the summer. This allowed us to shed light on tablet feasibility under different organizational constraints. Our findings show that tablet-based math practice is engaging for young children, independent of the setting, the student's age, or the math concept that was tackled. At the same time, we found that student engagement was a function of the presence of caring adults to facilitate their online math practice.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Michigan State University East Lansing, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Sara T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Stacy
authors.affiliation: Children's Cognitive Research Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH, USA.
authors.forename: Macey
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cartwright
authors.affiliation: Children's Cognitive Research Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH, USA.
authors.forename: Zjanya
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Arwood
authors.affiliation: School of Social Work, University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH, USA.
authors.forename: James P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Canfield
authors.affiliation: Children's Cognitive Research Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH, USA.
authors.forename: Heidi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kloos
keywords: IXL; ipad; math education; math learning; technology