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How Affordances And Constraints Of Physical And Virtual Manipulatives Support The Development Of Procedural Fluency And Algorithmic Thinking In Mathematics, Jennifer Such, Patricia S. Moyer-Packenham

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine how the affordances and constraints of physical and virtual manipulatives influence the development of students’ algorithmic thinking when learning algebra and rational number concepts. Thirty-six third-grade students participated in two weeks of instruction using physical and virtual manipulatives as instructional tools. The primary design of the study was a teaching experiment in which quantitative and qualitative data were collected to provide a holistic examination. Pre- and post-test items were used in the quantitative analysis following a within-subjects crossover repeated measures design. Students’ written work, a user survey, student interviews, field notes, and …