Classroom observations of middle school students' technology use in mathematics

School Science and Mathematics, Jan 1996 by Huang, Shwu-Yong L, Waxman, Hersholt C

In recent years, several studies and research syntheses have demonstrated the effectiveness of calculators and computers for improving students' cognitive outcomes (e.g., Bitter & Hatfield, 1992, 1993, Hambree & Dessart, 1986; Kulik & Kulik, 1987; Liao, 1992; Niemiec & Walberg, 1987, 1992; Ryan, 1991). These findings have provided strong evidence of the value of technology for middle school mathematics. Consequently, many professional organizations have encouraged mathematics educators to form the curriculum and incorporate more technology into classroom instruction and into the activities of middle school mathematics classrooms. The Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

NCTM

, 1989), Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (NCTM, 1991), Mathematical Association of America (MAA, 1991), Mathematical Sciences Education Board (MSEB, 1991), American Association for the Advancement of Science (Blackwell & Henkin, 1989), National Research Council (NRC, 1989, 1990), and Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (Willoughby, 1990) have all recommended the implementation of calculators and computers in middle school mathematics.

These national calls for change and the supporting search evidence have led to substantial financial investments by some school districts and by the federal government toward the purchase of technology for schools (Kondracke, 1992). Currently, there is evidence that nearly 98% of all schools have computers, and most schools expect to double their expenditures in technology during the next few years (Quality Education Data, 1991). Access to technology, encouragement from professional organizations, and support from research, however, are probably not enough to assure the realization of wide-spread technology use in classrooms. In fact, there is a general consensus that although technology is available in nearly every school, it is generally poorly integrated into the curriculum and often underused (Ognibene & Skeele, 1990). Furthermore, many educators have been concerned that the rapid acceptance and proliferation of computers has led to ineffective and inefficient approaches for integrating computers in the classroom (Maddux, Johnson, & Harlow, 1993). The next section describes some of the studies that have examined technology use in mathematics classes.

Technology Use in Mathematics Classes

In recent years, there has been a large number of studies examining the use of technology in schools (Becker, 1986, 1991, 1993; Picciano, 1991; Plomp & Pelgrum, 1991; Ross, 1991). Some of these studies have been generic in nature and have reported broad findings that a meant to be generalized either across the country, a region of the country, or a given state. Other studies have been more specific, assessing technology use in particular districts or individual schools, but these studies generally have not examined the extent to which computer technology is integrated in the curriculum and used in individual classrooms. The few studies that have examined technology in mathematics classrooms have generally found that technology is not being widely used in mathematics. Using national data collected on 18,000 tenth grade students from the first follow-up survey from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey of 1988, Owens and Waxman (1994), for example, found that about 84% of the 10th grade students reported that they "never" used computers in their mathematics classes and only 3% indicated that they used computers "often." Only 28% of the students, however, responded that they "never" used calculators in their mathematics classes. About 38% of the students said they used calculators "sometimes," and 34% indicated that they used calculators "often" in mathematics.

In another recent, national study that surveyed approximately 15,000 eighth grade mathematics teachers, Owens (1993) found that about 51% of the eighth grade mathematics teachers reported that students did not have access to calculators. Furthermore, about 53% of the teachers also reported that they hardly ever or never used calculators in their classroom. For those teachers using calculators, the results indicated that 26% used them several times a week. The remaining 21% of the teachers reported using calculators at least once a week. Similarly, about 52% of these teachers reported that less than 10% of their students were using computers in mathematics. The results of data collected from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) similarly reveals that there is limited use of computers and only some moderate use of calculators in mathematics classrooms (U. S. Department of Education, 1991). Only 10% of the eighth grade students from the NAEP national sample indicated that computers were available all of the time in their mathematics classroom. Forty-six percent of the eighth grade students indicated that they almost always used calculators to work problems in their mathematics class. Other studies have similarly found that technology is not widely used in mathematics classrooms (Becker, 1991).