1 Student Achievement Effects of Technology-Supported Remediation of Understanding of Fractions1

Students have difficulty learning fractions and problems in understanding fractions persist into adulthood, with moderate to severe consequences for everyday and occupational decision-making. Remediation of student misconceptions is hampered by deficiencies in teachers’ knowledge of the discipline and pedagogical content knowledge. We theorized that a technology resource could provide the sequencing and scaffolding that teachers might have difficulty providing. Five sets of learning objects, called CLIPS, were developed to provide remediation on fraction concepts. In this paper we describe one stage in a research program to develop, implement and evaluate CLIPS. Two studies were conducted. In the first, 14 grade 7-10 classrooms were randomly assigned, within schools, to early and late treatment conditions. A pre-post, delayed treatment design found that that CLIPS had no effect on achievement for the Early Treatment group due to unforeseen implementation problems. These hardware and software issues were mitigated in the late treatment in which CLIPS contributed to student achievement (Cohen’s d=.30). Study 2 was a pre-post, single group replication involving 18 grade 7 classrooms. Th