A teacher-implemented intervention program to promote finger use in numerical tasks

Résumé

What constitutes effective teaching of arithmetical skills in early school years is still uncertain. Finger use could play a crucial role in this acquisition, but some children do not use them spontaneously and studies would be necessary to know if it is possible to teach them. This research assesses the impact of a teacher-implemented intervention program to teach 5-year- to 6-year-old children to use their fingers in numerical tasks. Participants were 36 kindergarten pupils (16 girls, 20 boys; mean age 5 years, 5 months) from two classrooms. The research compares a program in which motor training and explicit teaching of finger use are promoted to represent numbers and to act on them, with a “business as usual” contrast group. Children were tested before and after the intervention with problem-solving. After the experimental training program, finger counting appears to be a good strategy because its frequency is positively linked to the scores in the problem-solving tasks. We showed a greater improvement in problem-solving following the finger use intervention, compared to the contrast group. Our results support the explicit teaching of finger use to build numerical representation and enhance the calculation skills of kindergarten students (age 5) in French schools.