Page 23 - Children’s mathematical development and learning needs in perspective of teachers’ use of dynamic math interviews

Aims, research questions, and design of the present research
The aim of the present research was to unravel the specific roles of various child and teacher factors in children’s mathematical development and, as part of doing this, the capacity of teachers to use dynamic math interviews to identify the specific math learning needs of elementary school children. The following main research questions were as follows.
1. How can children’s mathematical development, specifically arithmetic fluency and mathematical problem-solving, be predicted by child and teacher factors?
2. To what extent does the use of dynamic math interviews facilitate the identification of the math learning needs of children, promote teachers’ mathematics teaching and promote children’s mathematics learning?
To address the first research question, the prediction of children’s mathematical development – namely, arithmetic fluency and mathematical problem-solving1 – by various child factors (entrance- level mathematics achievement, math self-concept, math self- efficacy, and math anxiety after control for non-verbal reasoning) and by various teacher factors (actual mathematics teaching behavior, mathematical knowledge for teaching, and mathematics teaching self- efficacy) was examined longitudinally. Just how a number of aspects of children’s executive functioning (visuospatial and verbal updating, inhibition, and shifting) predict children’s mathematics achievement and mathematical development was also then examined. The aim of these analyses was to uncover the specific contributions of relevant child and teacher factors to children’s mathematical development.
To address the second research question, the utility of conducting dynamic math interviews to identify children’s math learning needs and improve the teaching of mathematics was investigated quasi- experimentally. The intervention consisted of participation of teachers
1 It should be noted that mathematical problem-solving is understood here as solving non-routine mathematical problems that thus challenge the child to come up with their own solution strategy (or strategies) (Polya, 1957; Doorman et al., 2007) In the present research, the data on the children’s mathematical problem-solving was collected using problems calling for the use of mathematical notation, text, and/or pictures — as done in standard Dutch math textbooks.
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General introduction
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