Mathematical skills

Foundations for future math performance: early arithmetic, home learning environment, and absence of math anxiety (2023). Trends in Neuroscience and Education (Germany, Q1)
Background: Achievements in mathematics are crucial for shaping children's future prospects. Cognitive skills (literacy), feelings (anxiety), and social environment (home learning environment) influence early mathematics development. Method: A longitudinal study involving 85 children (mean age T1 = 6.4 years; T2 = 7.9) was conducted to explore these predictors comprehensively. Data on early numeracy skills, home learning environment, math anxiety, and their impact on various aspects of math were collected. Results: The study found that early numeracy skills, home learning environment, and math anxiety significantly influenced math school performance. However, they affected written calculation, sequences, and comparisons differently. Early numeracy skills strongly predicted overall performance and performance on comparison subtests. Conclusion: These findings underscore the substantial role of math anxiety and the home learning environment in children's math performance. The study emphasizes the need to consider the selective impacts of these factors in future research, shedding light on the multifaceted nature of determinants of math performance.

Global justice and primary education: the case of mathematics, science, and languages (2023). International Journal of Education for Social Justice (Spain, Q1)
Understanding schools as drivers of change requires placing the world and people at the center of the educational process. The global citizenship education (GCE) approach helps us understand existing problems and participate in social transformation. Based on semi-structured interviews with people from Non-Governmental Development Organizations (NGDOs), primary school teachers, and university professors, and through coding, sequential interpretation, comparative analysis, and categorization of the data, this study investigates the current situation, possibilities, and difficulties of integrating the global dimension into the primary school curriculum, specifically in the areas of mathematics, science, and languages. The results point to the need to move towards a globalized approach, placing GCE as the axis that gives meaning to the whole body of school knowledge, overcoming a merely instrumental and literacy-based view of mathematics and languages, and questioning and expanding the work on eco-social themes in the field of science. The formation of a critical citizenry capable of responding to the challenges of today's society must begin in the early stages of education and be addressed in all areas of knowledge.

Interactive competence in English-language mathematics classrooms: Creating a technology-mediated translanguage space (2023). Learning and Instruction (United Kingdom, Q1)
Background: Research on second language classrooms has explored how teachers demonstrate their interactive competence in the classroom (ICC). CIC focuses on teachers' ability to use appropriate language to mediate student learning and promote learning opportunities. Research on translanguaging has highlighted how teachers and students mobilize diverse multilingual, multimodal, and spatial repertoires to collectively construct meaning in classroom interactions. Objectives and samples: Based on a larger linguistic ethnographic project in an English-medium secondary mathematics classroom in Hong Kong, this article adopts a case study approach to examine how the teacher's use of the iPad expands their option to use different multimodal repertoires to mediate and support students' academic language and mathematical knowledge learning. Methods: Multimodal Conversation Analysis is used to analyze classroom interaction data and is triangulated with video-regulation-stimulation interviews analyzed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Results: The results clearly show that the construction of a technology-mediated space demonstrates the CIC of the English-Medio teacher, who takes advantage of the semiotic repertoires available on the iPad to achieve their pedagogical objectives. Conclusions: I argue that the notion of CIC can be conceptualized by adopting translanguage as an analytical perspective, which highlights the teacher's ability to orchestrate technological possibilities in order to create an interactive space for student learning. This conceptualization reinforces the need for teachers to draw on a wide range of multilingual, multimodal, and technological repertoires to create a learning environment that fosters interaction and academic and linguistic learning in English as a foreign language classrooms.

Development of computational thinking through BlocksCAD, Blockly, and problem solving in mathematics (2024). Revista Española de Pedagogía (Spain, Q2)
The development of computational thinking has become an educational priority in several countries around the world. This article describes two classroom experiences using two block-based programming tools. In the first, only BlocksCAD was used. In the second, Blockly and several mathematical algorithms were also used. Twenty-eight students participated in the group that only used Blockly, and thirteen participated in the group that combined the use of both tools. All of them were in the third year of secondary education (aged between 14 and 15) at a school in Spain. The results show that, although the use of BlocksCAD alone has increased PC development, combining it with other resources such as Blockly in the math classroom can multiply its effect. In addition, participants expressed their satisfaction with the experience. As a proposal for the future, the possibility of allowing students to print their own creations using 3D modeling, something they requested themselves, is being considered. This would encourage us to continue using both tools and even try combining them with others and designing experiences that span academic years or at least entire quarters.

Elementary school mathematics during the COVID-19 pandemic: no evidence of learning gaps in adaptive practice outcomes (2021). Trends in Neuroscience and Education (Germany, Q1)
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic led many governments to close schools for months. So far, evidence suggests that learning has been affected as a result. Here, we investigate whether forms of computer-assisted learning mitigated the declines in learning observed during lockdown. Method: The performance of 53,656 elementary school students who used adaptive practice software for mathematics was compared with the performance of similar students in the previous year. Results: During lockdown, progress was faster than in the previous year, contradicting the results reported so far. These greater gains correlated with greater use and persisted after the lockdown ended. This was the case for all grades, but more so for lower grades and weaker students, and less so for students in schools with disadvantaged populations. Conclusions: These results suggest that adaptive practice software can mitigate, or even reverse, the negative effects of school closures on math learning.