Examine manipulative strategies across populations, domains, outcomes, and settings before issuing broad professional recommendations¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 3 claims (1 for, 2 mixed) · 2 studies (1 review, 1 theoretical), q2–q3 · 0 of 2 report an effect size · 3 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The commentary argues that coarse endorsements such as "manipulatives work" can create unrealistic expectancies or instructional misapplications, because the affordances and constraints of manipulatives are not self-evident. It recommends that "the effectiveness of strategies that use instructional manipulatives should be carefully examined across populations, domains, outcomes and settings prior to broad professional recommendations", and warns that conflating theory with empirical support can lead practitioners to misapply or indiscriminately reject promising approaches.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Systematic examination of instructional manipulatives across varied populations of learners under authentic learning conditions, with important learning outcomes measured and plausible rival hypotheses controlled

Constraints¶

• Prescriptive statements are especially prevalent in the manipulatives literature targeted at teachers of preschool- and elementary-age children, often without evidence-based guidance on who, what, when and how to apply the approach

Target Learners¶

• Preschool- and elementary-age children, the population most targeted by existing prescriptive statements

Target Learning Goals¶

• Appropriate selection and application of manipulative-based instruction across learning outcomes

Claims¶

• Concrete models eventually break; teachers devise patches that may obscure underlying concepts, and learner reasoning at breaking points is unknown [~W]
• Transfer-outcome format can favor symbolic controls over manipulative conditions (transfer-appropriate processing), potentially explaining inconsistent transfer findings [~W]
• A systematic review argues that concrete materials aid mathematics and science learning when they are explicitly and gradually connected to the abstract symbols they represent [+M]

Related Strategies¶

• Adopt model-based reasoning to improve communication and implementation between researchers and practitioners

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Scott C. Marley & Kira J. Carbonneau. (2014). Future Directions for Theory and Research with Instructional Manipulatives: Commentary on the Special Issue Papers. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-014-9259-1