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ERIC Number: EJ788400
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008
Pages: 20
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0193-3973
EISSN: N/A
Use of a Storytelling Context to Improve Girls' and Boys' Geometry Skills in Kindergarten
Casey, Beth; Erkut, Sumru; Ceder, Ineke; Young, Jessica Mercer
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, v29 n1 p29-48 Jan-Feb 2008
Two studies investigated the effects of a storytelling-context for teaching geometry skills to kindergarten girls and boys. In Study 1, the story+geometry intervention consisted of an adventure story teaching geometry through part-whole-relations puzzles. Learning was assessed through transfer of skills, using a pre-/post design comparing intervention and control groups. A near-transfer task included new puzzle-problems with the "same" puzzle-pieces as the intervention, and a far-transfer task used a "wider variety" of puzzle-pieces. In Study 1, using diverse suburban students from a lower-middle-class-community, boys improved independent of intervention/control condition on the near-transfer task, whereas girls showed greater improvement with the intervention, than without it. No effects of condition or sex were found on far transfer. Study 2 compared two types of interventions (storytelling+geometry versus geometry-alone) to determine effectiveness of a storytelling-context separate from geometry-content. Findings for the Study 2 sample of diverse kindergartners from a high-poverty urban community showed that storytelling-contexts were more effective than de-contextualized formats for learning geometry across both near- and far-transfer tasks. Across studies, girls benefited more than boys from the geometry-content interventions (both with and without a story context).
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Kindergarten
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A