Building Blocks is a National Science Foundation-funded project designed to enable all young children to build
a solid foundation for mathematics. To ensure this, we used a design and development model that drew from theory
and research in each phase. Our design process is based on the assumption that curriculum and software design can
and should have an explicit theoretical and empirical foundation, beyond its genesis in someone’s intuitive grasp of
children’s learning. It also should interact with the ongoing development of theory and research-reaching toward
the ideal of testing a theory by testing the software and curriculum in which it is embedded. Our model includes
specification of mathematical ideas (computer objects or manipulatives) and processes/skills (software “tools” or
actions) and extensive field-testing from the first inception through to large summative evaluation studies. The initial
field test results indicate that such an approach can result in significant assessed learning gains consistent with the
new Principles and Standards for School Mathematics of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.
© 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.