Mathe-Navi

In light of relevant prevalence and school performance studies, it is assumed that about one in five children needs special support in learning mathematics (summarized by Sikora & Voß, 2018). However, current support practices do not always seem to meet this requirement.

One explanation for this is that professionally developed support materials only cover specific content areas (e.g., to support learning the multiplication tables or to move away from counting-based calculation) or grade levels, and particularly cover the content of initial lessons. A closer look at the quality of the materials reveals that, while they are didactically well designed, they have rarely been scientifically evaluated. Therefore, there is hardly any evidence that children actually make learning progress with these materials. An overview of currently available support materials is provided by Schneider, Küspert, and Krajewski (2021).

Out of this complex situation, a support concept called the Mathe -Navi is developed, which aims to:

1. Be a continuous support concept for the entire elementary school period,
2. Be made freely accessible to all teachers, and
3. Have its effectiveness scientifically proven in controlled evaluation studies.

The Navi concept is currently fully developed for grades 1 and 2. The diagnostic and support guidelines and materials for grades 3 and 4 will be added in the future. The effects of support according to the Mathe-Navi can be assessed based on 34 controlled single-case studies conducted so far, which were summarized meta-analytically. The illustration on the right shows that most children made significant learning progress through support following the Mathe-Navi concept, although it did not work for two children. The combined, weighted effect size is Tau-U = .71, which underlines the effectiveness of the Navi concept (Parker, Vannest & Davis, 2011; Parker, Vannest, Davis & Sauber, 2011; Rakap, 2015; Tarlow, 2017).

The Mathe-Navi is available online at www.lernlinie.de/to/mathenavi There, you can also find further information on the methodology of the concept's effectiveness evaluation.

Click here to view the project in the research database of the Europa-Universität Flensburg.