Research shows how apps enhance learning in primary mathematics

A research project has highlighted the potential advantages for both teachers and students of strengthening digital environments in classrooms. As teachers experiment with apps in their teaching, they progress along the TPACK continuum (see sidebar), to the point that they consciously encourage students to explore and experiment with technology. Students created dynamic presentations of their mathematical processes, strategies, and solutions using apps that enable video and audio recording.

The key findings emphasise quality teacher practice as central to the success of apps as a teaching tool. They also show how carefully chosen apps can enable social interaction, personalisation, differentiation of the learning, and engagement with mathematical ideas.

This article draws on the project report and includes reflections from the project leader,
Dr Nigel Calder, and two of the teacher-partners: Rebekah Whyte and Monique Storey.

Students’ learning needs should drive app choices

The research team identified two main types of app, consumable and creative. Consumable apps prompt students to practise facts and skills and reinforce what they know. Creative apps are open-ended and may not be specifically about maths, but require the students to bring their mathematical thinking to the app.

The project identified the most important decisions teachers make in selecting apps.

Monique, herself an app designer, says her starting point is always the students’ learning needs. “A carefully selected app that is being used well will promote engagement, show results, and promote higher-order thinking.”

Apps can support students to discuss their mathematical thinking

Within the project, teachers used apps that supported interaction and sharing. Students worked in groups, recording their thinking and sharing audio and video to get feedback.

Nigel observed students working in groups to solve mathematics problems. Even where they had their own devices, three or four of them would be around one screen. “They would video themselves explaining their thinking around the problem. They could take photos and incorporate that into what they were talking around. It was very collaborative,” he says.

Most students in the study used apps on iPads. Monique says they showed one another how to do things in a way they would not do in mathematics exercise books.

“It is easy for one child to show another how to do something on a screen, then it can be built on or deleted, and the child carries on with their new information. They wouldn’t draw an explanation in someone else’s book, but they will do it on a screen.”

Recording themselves gave students the opportunity to develop and demonstrate their mathematical thinking. It was not enough to get an answer, they had to explain the thinking that got them there. And that thinking was shared with an audience of classmates, rather than the teacher as an audience of one.

Monique sees that the wider audience can be an advantage. “The audience – their classmates – was listening, giving feedback, and agreeing or disagreeing, all of which is fostering mathematical thinking.”

Rebekah says reviewing the recordings helped her understand student reasoning and identify when mathematical thinking had gone awry. She gave the example of a student who had got the right answer by luck. “I wouldn’t have picked it up unless I listened to her recording of her reasoning.”

Apps provide options

Apps offer many ways for the students to engage with the content, often combining sound, visuals, and invitations to respond. “They input data and see graphs change, boom, so it’s dynamic and moving seamlessly between different representations enhances the understanding,” says Nigel.

Rebekah says that the opportunity to personalise their mathematics learning made activities more meaningful and real for the students. A simple search to find images that matched the problem they were solving increased student engagement.

A good teacher is more important than a good app

While a high-quality app that is well matched to the students’ learning needs is optimum, the project showed that the quality of the teaching is more important.

“With a so-called average app, a good teacher can still make that work. They know their students and they know the content – the maths – and they know the pedagogy. The optimum is a well-designed app coupled with appropriate pedagogy. That combination can be really effective for mathematics learning,” says Nigel.

Monique says that the culture the teacher creates in the classroom is key to the success of apps as learning tools for mathematics.

“They work best when there is a culture of collaboration and challenge.”