Browsing by Author "Hakman, Jasu"

The aim of this Master’s Thesis in the field of special education was to find out, in what ways does an explicit intervention programme (ThinkMath) make a difference on mathematical skills of mathematically weak pupils straight after the intervention and also at delayed measures. Also this research was made to find out, is there a statistically meaningful difference in mathematical skills between children, who only have difficulties in mathematics compared to children, who also have difficulties in language additionally with difficulties in mathematics? Considering previous studies on this subject, one could expect an influence from the intervention programme. Also statistically meaningful difference can be expected, considering previous studies which have pointed out, that difficulties in language add risk for difficulties in mathematics. The data of this research consists of 274 primary education children. All children made tests at three different time points. The tests were about mathematical and language skills. After the first timepoint, the children were divided in to groups, which were the intervention group, a control group and the others. The other time point was right after the intervention and the third was delayed after the intervention. / The results of this research are conflicted with previous studies on this subject. The results showed that skills of the intervention group grew more than the control group at first, during the intervention, and better skills showed at tests right after the intervention, but not anymore at the delayed tests. Also, there was not a statistically meaningful difference between the groups with different learning difficulties. These results may occur because of the small size of the groups and also by the wide range of reasons and implications of mathematical learning difficulties. These results can not be generalised, but they give reason to make a new research with larger groups.