23.5.1.5. Meaning Versus Algorithmic Math Teaching. In a year-long study of 40 eighth-grade mathematics classrooms comparing teaching with meaning, teaching with algorithmic strategies, and conventional teaching strategies, Sigurdson and Olson (1992) found significant effects for teaching with meaning. Both the algorithmic teaching and meaning strategies were considered innovative treatments. They defined algorithmic teaching as teaching math emphasizing computational performance and automatic application of mathematical rules. They defined "teaching with meaning" as "teaching in context." Students used physical and pictorial objects to represent mathematical concepts, placed concepts in familiar applications, and performed mathematical interpretations. The conventional classrooms were control groups using typical strategies. Included in their study was a long-term training program to help teachers learn either the algorithmic or meaning strategies, though the training program ran concurrently with the classroom treatments. Reported results are based only on the teachers who were considered successful implementers of the strategies.
The results of the study are a bit difficult to interpret, because they make a distinction between class ability and student ability, the relevance of which is hard to understand. It is also difficult to find the results that were "significant" over those that "showed trends." However, generally, the students in the classes of teachers who successfully implemented the teaching-with-meaning strategies had the highest achievement at the end of the year on a posttest. The above-average classes showed much greater gains in performance under the meaning strategies, while the below-average performed equally poorly under all strategies. In terms of individual abilities, higher-level students performed well under any strategy, while the middle-level ability students did better with the meaning strategy. The lower-level students did poorly with all strategies. Sigurdson's and Olson's study is a complex study fraught with all of the confounding problems of doing research in this area: individual ability levels, different classes, different teaching styles, the difficulty in achieving consistency among treatment classes, teacher training, and teacher cooperation. They may have had poorer results with the lower-ability students because their definition of "meaning" and "context" was severely limited. The teaching-with-meaning activities, though aimed at a deeper understanding of the concepts, lacked the authenticity level found in the Jasper series. The training program may have also had a negative effect on class achievement because some teachers may have grasped and implemented the strategies before others. The significance of their study is in the questions raised related to individual differences and abilities.