The effect of digital play supported math education program on the development of numeracy related basic math skills of children aged 54-66 months

The aim of this study is to examine the effect of digital play supported math education program and digital plays with a math content on the development of counting related basic math skills and level of liking math of children aged 54-66 months. Furthermore, it is also aimed to determine the changes in these children's math skills, level of liking math, and thoughts on math as well as their views and attitudes towards digital plays. The study was carried out in embedded mixed method. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental paired control group design in the quantitative dimension of the study and exploratory and explanatory case study designs in the qualitative dimension of the study are utilized. Participants of the study are 54 children aged 54-66 months old in independent kindergartens and nursery classrooms under elementary education subordinate to Altındağ District Directorate of National Education in 2019-2020 educational year in districts inhabited by families with low socio-economic level in Ankara. 18 of these children constituted experimental group 1, another 18 the experimental group 2, and the remaining 18 the control group. For ten weeks throughout the application of the study, 'Digital Play Supported Math Education Program' (DPSMEP) with children in experimental group 1 and 'Digital Play Apps with Math Content' (DPAMC) were carried out with children in experimental group 2 in two sessions a week. In the meantime, children in the control group were not intervened in any way by the researcher. The quantitative data were collected with Demographic Information Form, Revised Early Numeracy Test and The Mathematics Liking Scale for Children, Qualitative data on the other hand were gathered through observations during the application of the research, interviews and children's products. To analyze quantitative data Shapiro-Wilk test, Mann-Whitney U test, The Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test and Cohen's d were carried out in SPSS 24 software. The qualitative data were subjected to content analysis. The findings show that DPSMEP and DPAMC has a significant effect on children's numeracy related basic math skills and that DPSMEP where digital plays were integrated into teaching activities was more effective in terms of developing children's numeracy related basic math skills compared to DPAMC which consisted solely of digital plays. This finding is supported by findings from the qualitative dimension of the study. In addition, implementations in the experimental group 1 and 2 raised the level of children's liking of math; however, the relevant mean scores did not show a significant difference. Contrary to this finding, according to qualitative data, children in the experimental groups in the implementation stage had positive feelings towards math. In other words, they effected children's like for math positively. Furthermore, while children in experimental groups 1 and 2 prior to the implementation of the study explained math as a "lesson" and "assignment" in a broad sense, they explained math in such positive thoughts as "math concepts and skills" and "game". On the other hand, while the children in the control group mostly explained math with "math concepts and skills" and "other activity types" before the implementation, they preferred to do so less frequently after it. Additionally, feelings and opinions of children in experimental group 1 and 2 towards digital playes with math contents were mostly positive. These results show that use of digital plays in preschool math education positively effects children's both numeracy related basic math skills and affective participation related to math.