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