Beyond basic skills: An effective foundation intervention for low-achieving fifth graders’ understanding of basic concepts

Low-achieving students need targeted interventions to remediate the critical foundational knowledge required for successful further learning trajectories. For Grade 5, critical basic concepts (e.g., place-value understanding and meaning of multiplication) and basic skills (e.g., counting in steps and multiplication facts) have been identified as equally important and highly intertwined. However, evidence for the effectiveness of foundation intervention programs has mainly been provided for basic skills and for younger children’s understanding of basic concepts but has not yet been sufficiently provided for fifth graders’ understanding of basic concepts. In this paper, we present a quasi-experimental implementation trial ( n = 295) on the effectiveness of the Mastering Math foundation intervention program that aims at fostering understanding of basic concepts in arithmetic. Teachers in the intervention group were prepared in professional development courses and supported by detailed formative assessment and teaching materials to foster low-achieving students’ understanding in small-group interventions supplemental to the regular mathematics classrooms. Teachers in the control classes received assessment feedback on students’ achievement and the suggestion to work on basic skills and basic concepts, but no professional development or teaching materials for their regular mathematics classrooms. The intervention group was compared to a control group (selected by propensity score matching) by analyses of variances with repeated measures, applying gender, socioeconomic status, immigrant background, and reading proficiency as co-variates. The intervention group significantly outperformed the control group in the explicitly covered basic concepts. No transfer effect was found for basic skills. Further analyses showed that the intervention group learned significantly more than their higher-achieving classmates. Most interesting was a positive spillover effect that all students in the Mastering Math schools learned significantly more basic concepts of below-grade content, so the teachers’ professional experiences in the small-group foundation intervention seem to also have diffused into their regular classrooms. The results show that, when teachers gain additional expertise on fostering understanding of basic concepts, conceptually focused foundation intervention programs targeting understanding of basic concepts can be effectively implemented and can even have an impact on the learning of those students who did not attend the small-group intervention. • Conceptually focused intervention programs for low-achieving fifth graders can be effectively realized. • The conceptually focused intervention can support a catching-up effect for low-achieving students. • Spillover effects of foundation interventions teaching for all students at participating schools. • Content coverage is key as there are no transfer effects for learning uncovered contents.