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This research examined whether children’s construals of mathematical manipulatives – as toys or as tools for doing mathematics – influenced their learning from a lesson with the manipulatives. Children (grades 2 and 3) were presented with a set of buckets and beanbags, and they were either given no information about the manipulatives (control) or were told that the manipulatives could be used for playing a game, for doing mathematics, or both. The manipulatives were then used in a lesson about mathematical equivalence. Participants who were instructed to view the manipulatives as math tools performed better on measures of learning, transfer, and conceptual knowledge than did participants who were not instructed to view the manipulatives in this way.
Donovan et al. (Mon,) studied this question.