What is it about?
We found that teaching following learning trajectories, always starting at the child’s level of thinking, for learning to put shapes together to make new shapes may promote more learning, including learning the goal competencies (!), than an equivalent amount of instruction targeting those goals directly.
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Why is it important?
Even though the group was taught the goal for *all* sessions, they learned less than children who moved through learning trajectories based on their ways of thinking. Also, they showed less counter-productive frustration than the teach-to-the-gola group.
Perspectives
This shows that instruction that was provided beyond a child’s level is not only ineffective, but also counter-productive as it may increase a child’s aversion to mathematics.
Douglas Clements
University of Denver
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Evaluating the Efficacy of a Learning Trajectory for Early Shape Composition, American Educational Research Journal, April 2019, American Educational Research Association (AERA),
DOI: 10.3102/0002831219842788.
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