Specialist in Education, Miami University, 2019, Educational Psychology
Today professions and post-secondary opportunities in the United States in the areas of science,
technology, and engineering are continuously growing and requiring students to have complex
understandings of mathematical concepts. As the demand for these professions continues to
grow, mathematic achievement scores in the U.S. continue to decline. The current study seeks to
examine if an alternative to explicit instruction, such as play, through a multiplication fluency
game, can improve mathematic motivation and multiplicative fluency. Students in two third
grade classrooms were given pre and posttest curriculum-based fluency tests and surveys focused
on their attitude toward math to compare results between the treatment and control classrooms.
The treatment classroom played a multiplication fluency game for three days a week for four
weeks while the control classroom engaged in traditional instruction. Results were examined
qualitatively and quantitatively to conclude that the play intervention appears to have no
significance when compared to instruction without a fluency game on mathematical fluency
scores.
Committee: Sarah Watt (Committee Chair); Doris Bergen (Committee Member); Brooke Spangler-Cropenbaker (Committee Member)
Subjects: Education; Educational Psychology; Mathematics; Mathematics Education