Response to a Specific and Digitally Supported Training at Home for Students With Mathematical Difficulties

Abstract

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of a shortened, specialized, and digitally supported training program for enhancing numerical skills in primary and secondary school children with mathematical difficulty (MD). The participants (n = 57) were randomly assigned to two groups: for the experimental group, the tasks were differentiated and adapted to each student’s learning profile. Moreover, children of this group used a Web App (i.e., “I bambini contano” or “Children count” in English) for improving arithmetic fact retrieval at home; for the control group, the difficulty of the activities was graded according to the school curriculum, and this group did not use the Web App. Pre‐ to post-training measurements showed that children of the experimental group had an improvement significantly higher than the control group, in particular in arithmetic facts and written calculation. Moreover, a follow-up evaluation indicated that the efficacy of the experimental training program lasted up to 2 months after the intervention. The results indicate that a specialized face-to-face intervention along with a digitally supported training at home can benefit children with mathematical learning difficulties.