Lampé-Muzsnay Anna at the PME 47 conference

One of the most important factors that have an impact on academic success is prior academic achievement. A strong indicator of academic success is grades (Alyahyan, & Düştegör, 2020). Aiming to reduce the gap between students’ first-year academic achievement in mathematics courses, we applied a special retrieval practice. The positive effects of retrieval practice – the strategic use of retrieval to enhance memory – have been shown in several cases. Still, to what extent it can help students learn higher mathematics of different input levels has been a question (Agarwal et al., 2021).

In this research, we investigated first-year pre-service mathematics teachers’ performance in two mathematics courses, Number Theory and Abstract Algebra, each of which lasted 13 weeks. The sample comprises 42 and 50 students who attended these courses. Within the two courses, we divided the students into two groups. At the end of the practice sessions, the experimental group wrote a 5-10 minute test on the material learned on the given day. They had to solve two problems individually without external help. In the control group, the teacher presented the solutions to these problems. Students’ input level was assessed at the beginning of their studies, and their topic-related problem-solving skills were measured twice during the semester. Also, students wrote a post-test 3 and 5 months after finishing the course.

We examined their test and post-test results in the two courses relative to their input level using linear regression. The results show that in Number Theory the knowledge gap narrowed over time in the experimental group; on the post-test students with lower input scores could catch up (y=0,07x+69,24; R2=0,018). In the control group, the knowledge gap remained (y=0,95x-4,30; R2=0,40). Similar results emerged in Algebra. In the presentation, results will be discussed in detail. Our findings suggest the applied retrieval practice can be an effective way of reducing the knowledge gap in learning higher mathematics that teachers can easily incorporate into their lessons.