Raising early achievement in math with interactive apps: A randomized control trial.

Improving provision and raising achievement in early math for young children is of national importance. Child-centered apps offer an opportunity to develop strong foundations in learning math as they deliver one-to-one instruction. Reported here is the first pupil-level randomized control trial in the United Kingdom of interactive math apps designed for early years education, with 389 children aged 4–5 years. The original and rigorous research design disentangled the impact of the math apps as a form of quality math instruction from additional exposure to math. It was predicted that using the apps would increase math achievement when implemented by teachers in addition to standard math activities (treatment) or instead of a regular small group-based math activity (time-equivalent treatment) compared with standard math practice only (control). After a 12-week intervention period, results showed significantly greater math learning gains for both forms of app implementation compared with standard math practice. The math apps supported targeted basic facts and concepts and generalized to higher-level math reasoning and problem solving skills. There were no significant differences between the 2 forms of math app implementation, suggesting the math apps can be implemented in a well-balanced curriculum. Features of the interactive apps, which are grounded in instructional psychology and combine aspects of direct instruction with play, may account for the observed learning gains. These novel results suggest that structured, content-rich, interactive apps can provide a vehicle for efficiently delivering high-quality math instruction for all pupils in a classroom context and can effectively raise achievement in early math.

"This study found that combining child-centered, curriculumbased, apps with interactive touch-screen tablet technology for children aged 4–5 years old in the first year of school provides an effective means of delivering quality instruction that promotes the development of early math skills...children in Group 1 (treatment) who used the math apps in addition to all normal math practices were 3–4 months ahead of their peers in Group 3 (control) receiving standard practice only (betweengroups effect size 0.31). Children in Group 2 (time-equivalent treatment) who used the math apps instead of one daily regular small group math activity were shown to be approximately 2 months ahead of children in Group 3 (control) receiving standard practice only (between-groups effect size 0.21). However, there was no significant difference between implementing the math apps as well as all standard math practices or instead of one regular small group math activity. This indicates the apps are a form of quality math instruction" (Outhwaite et al, 2019: 239).