Effekten av laborativt material på elevers begreppsliga förståelse : En kvasiexperimentell studie om effekten av laborativt material för matematikundervisning om rationella tal för årskurs 5

Sammanfattning

The aim of this study is to investigate how mathematics teaching using laboratory materials affects students’ conceptual understanding of fractions in Grade 5. The study is based on a quantitative method in the form of a quasi-experimental intervention, where one experimental group was taught using laboratory materials while a control group received regular instruction without such support. Both groups completed a pre-test and a post-test to measure their development. The results show that both the control group and the experimental group improved their results somewhat between the pre-test and the post-test. When only the test results of students who participated in both test occasions were analyzed, the control group increased from an average of 8.2 to 10.5 points, while the experimental group increased from 8.2 to 11.3 points. The improvement was therefore slightly greater in the experimental group. However, the statistical analysis showed that the difference in development between the groups was not statistically significant. The results therefore provide no statistical evidence that teaching with laboratory materials led to greater learning gains than the instruction received by the control group. The results indicate that both teaching with laboratory materials and regular teaching can contribute to students' conceptual understanding of fractions. In particular, improvements were observed in students’ ability to compare fractions, place fractions on a number line, and convert between fractions, decimals, and percentages. The results can be understood in relation to the variation theory and the theory of multiple representations, where students are given the opportunity to discern important relationships by working with different representations of the same mathematical content. The intervention was conducted over a limited period of time, which may have affected the possibility of observing larger differences between the groups. The results of the study show that students in the experimental group improved their results after the intervention. However, since the control group also improved and the difference between the groups was not statistically significant, the findings should be interpreted with caution.