The impact of a reform-based elementary mathematics textbook on students' fractional number sense

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of a reform-based elementary mathematics textbook on students' fractional number sense. The research questions answered in this study were: (1) What are the differences in intended presentation of fractions between a reform-based textbook and traditional elementary mathematics textbook for grades 4, 5 and 6? (2) What impact does the intended presentation of fractions in a reform-based and a traditional textbook have on fifth and sixth grade PSSA scores related to basic fractional number sense in two assessment anchors? The reform-based textbook was Everyday Mathematics and the traditional textbook varied with the districts. The first research question addressed the following: (1) When are fractions intended to be first introduced in each textbook and what fractional topic is being presented? (2) What chapter is dedicated to the study of fractions and what is the position of this chapter in relation to other mathematical concepts presented at the grade level? (3) How are the different fractional concepts presented to students? The instrumentation used to answer the second research question were results on the fifth and sixth grade PSSA, for years 2007 and 2008 respectively.;Data was collected from eight school districts; four districts that implement Everyday Mathematics as their intended curriculum and four that implement traditional textbooks. The researcher had access to school district data for all 500 districts in Pennsylvania and was able to closely match pairs of school districts based on 3rd grade PSSA results from 2005. Over 2600 students' data were used for the fifth grade analysis and over 3100 student data was used for the sixth grade analysis.;The textbook analysis for this study revealed differences between the reform-based textbook (Everyday Mathematics) and traditional textbook (Silver Burdett Ginn). Fractions were presented earlier in the textbook for Everyday Mathematics and the manipulatives for instruction were varied. Silver Burdett Ginn used one manipulative for the presentation of fractions and the fraction chapter(s) often appeared later in the textbook. Results on the fifth and sixth grade PSSA revealed significant differences between the reform-based and traditional textbook school districts. The independent samples t-test, between-subjects design, was used to determine whether the difference between means of the two groups was due to the independent variable (textbook), or if the difference is simply due to chance. Two-way ANOVAs were performed to determine if there was a significant difference by gender, economically disadvantaged students, or special education students based on the textbook series used.;Results for the fifth grade assessment anchor showed three Everyday Mathematics school districts had a significantly higher mean than the paired traditional textbook school districts. Results for the sixth grade assessment anchor showed all four Everyday Mathematics school district had higher means and all four means were significantly different than the traditional textbook school district pairing. It can be concluded from there results that using the Everyday Mathematics textbook series does show significant difference in overall student achievement related to fractional number sense.