THURSDAY, April 24 (HealthDay News) -- The use of "real-world"
concrete examples doesn't help students learn math, according to an
Ohio State University study that challenges the widespread use of
this approach in classrooms.
The study found that college students who learned a mathematical
concept with concrete examples couldn't apply that knowledge to new
situations, while students who learned the same concept through
abstract examples were much more likely to be able to transfer that
knowledge to different situations.
The study is published in the April 25 issue of the journal
Science.
"These findings cast doubt on a long-standing belief in
education. The belief in using concrete examples is very deeply
ingrained and hasn't been questioned or tested," study co-author
Vladimir Sloutsky, professor of psychology and human development
and director of the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State,
said in a prepared statement.
Examples of concrete learning include story problems often given
to math students, such as the classic one of two trains that leave
different cities and head toward each other at different
speeds.
"The danger with teaching using this example is that many
students only learn how to solve the problem with the trains,"
study leader Jennifer Kaminski, a research scientist at the Center
for Cognitive Science, said in a prepared statement. "If students
are later given a problem using the same mathematical principles,
but about rising water levels instead of trains, that knowledge
just doesn't seem to transfer."
"It is very difficult to extract mathematical principles from
story problems," Sloutsky added. "Story problems could be an
incredible teaching instrument for testing what was learned. But
they are bad instruments for teaching."
Story problems and the use of visual aids such as marbles or
containers of liquid seem to help students learn math concepts more
quickly, so it's easy to understand why they're so popular. But
extraneous information included in this kind of concrete learning
may divert attention from the real mathematics in the lesson, the
researchers said.
"We really need to strip these concepts down to very symbolic
representations such as variables and numbers. Then students are
better prepared to apply those concepts to a variety of
situations," Kaminski said.
More information
The Ontario Ministry of Education offers advice to parents on
how to help their children learn math.
