Page 192 - Children’s mathematical development and learning needs in perspective of teachers’ use of dynamic math interviews

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Chapter 6
of a problem; devising a solution plan; consideration of alternative strategies; selection and application of most suitable strategies, operations, and algorithms; and learning to do all of this across a variety of contexts (Verschaffel et al., 2020). Achieving arithmetic fluency — for those who have not — and maintaining this requires teaching that is focused on not only drill-and-practice to improve speed and accuracy of basic arithmetic skills but also stimulation of children to identify underlying relationships, alternative strategies, and strategies in need of practice to attain and improve arithmetic fluency. A good balance between the acquisition of skills, rules, and procedures is essential for successful mathematics instruction.
To stimulate and improve children’s mathematics learning and math-related thinking, it is crucial that teachers have a capacity to do the following, among other things: make carefully considered choices; adopt and apply elements from a variety of teaching approaches shown to be effective; and adapt their teaching to the identified learning needs of children (Kyriakides et al., 2013; Mitchell, 2015). They should also recognize that interventions aimed at improving executive functioning are best conducted in relation to domain-specific goals (Jacob & Parkinson, 2015).
Given that a clear association was found in the present research between children’s math self-concept and arithmetic fluency, we can conclude that it is important for children to be given plenty of opportunities early in their development for the learning of mathematics. Only then can the elementary school child feel sufficiently confident and thus comfortable to tackle the challenge of mathematical problem- solving. Math self-concept is more past-oriented than — for instance — math self-efficacy (Wolff et al., 2018) and should therefore be recognized as a critical factor in children’s mathematics education.
A point related to the above is that fourth grade children have greater experience with arithmetic than with mathematical problem-solving. It is thus important that performing domain-specific interventions to promote successful mathematical problem-solving and enhance (or maintain) math self-concept be part of the mathematics curriculum and teaching. Praise and immediate, targeted, concrete, and otherwise