| This experimental study was conducted to examine the effects of Right-Brain mathematics strategies and materials on students functioning at the lower quartile of mathematics achievement. One hundred forty-seven fourth-grade subjects were randomly assigned to either the Control group, which was exposed to the traditional paper and pencil abstract level mathematics, or to the Experimental group, which used a curriculum developed to facilitate learning for Right-Brain preference students.;The results showed there were no significant differences among: (1) numbers of Lefts and Rights in the sample, (2) posttest scores for Rights and Lefts in either the Experimental or Control group, nor (3) posttest scores for Rights in the Control and Rights in the Experimental groups. As only 58 percent of the sample were in the lower quartile of Mathematics Achievement, further analyses were performed on that portion of the sample. Small n resulted from the reduced numbers and the number of cells used in the factorial design; therefore, the findings are only tentative and merely point to possible patterns. Those tentative findings include: (1) there are more Rights among lower achieving mathematics students and more Lefts among higher achieving students, (2) students in the Control group achieved higher scores if they were Lefts while Rights achieved higher scores if they were in the Experimental group, and (3) female Rights in the Experimental group made greater gains than any other group. |
