On Narrowing the Performance Gap in Mathematical Thinking between Advantaged and Disadvantaged Children

Abstract

A special curriculum was designed for teaching cryptarithmetic to investigate whether disadvantaged students can reach a level of competence in mathematical thinking and whether the gap between them and advantaged students can be narrowed. In this program, the students learned to apply relevant problem-solving strategies and simple mathematical rules and to test hypotheses systematically. The findings indicated that a careful application of certain learning principles to the training of disadvantaged students resulted in an appreciably narrowed gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. The relationships between the cryptarithmetic performance and several tests of mental ability and achievement in mathematics were presented and discussed.