Why are my findings important?
These findings suggest that teachers know manipulatives benefit students, but they struggle with implementing them in the classroom with students and rarely use them in class. Many teachers mentioned their lack of training on manipulatives, alluding to not being taught how to use them in college. The majority of the teachers surveyed said they would like to receiving professional development or visit classrooms to see how manipulatives are being used. Additionally, teachers cited time constraints relating to their lack of manipulative use. This is important because many districts, my current one included, have strict pacing guides teachers are expected to keep up with. Using manipulatives does take time, especially when first introducing them, but they benefit students in the long run.
How do my findings influence my classroom?
I know my students benefit from manipulative use, but I agree with my colleagues regarding the issue of available time. Our curriculum moves fast, and it’s hard to squeeze in time for manipulatives and stay on pace to cover all of the material my district expects for each module. I would like to review our current pacing guides and see how it can be adapted to focus on more manipulative use and learning progressions.
Using manipulatives is very important for all students. They need to be able to use manipulatives in order to move from concrete to abstract levels of understanding. In the past, I've been guilty of using manipulatives to introduce a new concept, then expecting students to understand and be ready to move on to abstract levels of understanding. Now, I've become more aware of the importance of progressing from concrete understanding with manipulatives to visual representation with drawings to abstract representation. I need to make the transition from one level of understanding to the next more fluid in my classroom.
How do my findings influence my teaching?
I will be incorporating more manipulative use in my classroom. I’ll make sure to show students how to use them, but also be ready to show them next steps towards abstract understanding by incorporating instruction for creating visual representations on their own or by seeing images of the manipulatives and using those to problem solve. I’ll also continue to look for new ideas for manipulative use. Students deserve to develop thorough mathematical understanding, and workbooks and worksheets are not the best starting point.
How do my findings influence my school?
I plan to share this research with my math coach and principals. I hope they consider scheduling professional development, visits to demo classrooms in the district, visits to classrooms in the building that are currently using manipulatives, and purchasing more manipulatives for teachers to use. My principal is very data-driven. I believe she will be receptive to my findings, as the use of manipulatives will improve test scores in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, which is her primary focus in our building. Additionally, I pitched the upcoming math conference in Columbia to my principals and learning coach as a great way to learn more about math instruction. Many teachers in my building have signed up to attend and are looking forward to learning new ways to strengthen their mathematics instruction.
How are my findings situated in the literature from my literature review? Where do my findings fit in/support/add detail to the existing literature?
Many of the articles I read discussed similar findings as mine. I specifically looked for articles that supported manipulative use and opposed manipulative use in upper elementary grades. I wanted to see multiple perspectives on this topic. The issues my interview subjects brought up were nearly identical to the issues mentioned in the articles I read. Additionally, the reasons in favor of using manipulatives were also similar. Overall, teachers know that manipulatives benefit their students, but it is hard to incorporate them in the classroom for reasons such as time and lack of knowledge about how to use manipulatives.
What other explanations could there be for my results?
My school was supposed to have some math manipulative professional development with a professor from William Jewell College this semester. However, the first session was cancelled due to a winter weather and not rescheduled until late February, which was after the survey and interviews were conducted. Knowing that this professional development was coming may have influenced survey results, as teachers may have started thinking more about manipulatives in preparation. Additionally, our school’s math closet was recently cleaned out and organized, and an email was sent out detailing some of the manipulatives available in the closet, which may have motivated teachers to use manipulatives they may not have been aware were available to them.
What are the limitations of my study?
I had six teachers complete the survey, and I only had the chance to interview four of them. Based on the varying amount of teaching experience and diverse undergraduate programs represented, the teachers surveyed and interviewed shared a wide spectrum of manipulative familiarity and use in their classrooms. However, the results are limited due to the small sample size of teachers involved in this study, as the only teachers involved in my research work at my current school. Additional surveys and interviews of teachers from a wide variety of schools, districts, and states would provide a more detailed look into manipulative use in upper elementary math classrooms. This would give a more reliable picture of current teacher experiences with manipulatives.
What might be my next steps to learn more about this topic?
I am interested to learn about manipulative use during our upcoming professional development. I am also interested in learning more about steps to move students from concrete to abstract understanding. Additionally, I would like to research the use of manipulatives on math tests, specifically standardized testing. I would like for students to be able to use manipulatives on tests, and I think it would be interesting to see results of schools or states that currently allow this. My students recently took a test covering decimal place value and decimal operations. Several of my students were still using base ten blocks to build decimal numbers in order to compare or order them and asked to use them on their test. Unfortunately, I had to tell them that they weren’t allowed. I know these students would have answered all of the questions about comparing and ordering decimals correctly had they been allowed to use manipulatives.