DISSERTATION DEFENSE ANNOUNCEMENT Ph.D. in Education Program: Moosa Ali Abdullah Alhadi “Effects of Chunking Intervention on Enhancing Geometry Performance in High School Students with Mathematics Learning Difficulties”

Chunking is a strategy that can help reduce the cognitive load demanded in the processing of information, and it has been applied as a testing accommodation for high school students with math learning difficulties in geometry assessments. This study aims to expand upon the existing literature by examining the effect of chunking as an intervention, rather than just a testing accommodation, on the geometry performance of high school students with math learning difficulties.

The study used a multiple probe design across participants and address the following research questions:

(a) To what extent will the chunking intervention improve the geometry performance of high school students with math learning difficulties as measured by a proximal measure (i.e., geometry problem solving probes related to lines and angles)?

(b) To what extent will the effects of chunking intervention maintain two weeks after the conclusion of the intervention as measured by the proximal measure?

(c) To what extent will the students be able to generalize their geometry knowledge to distal measures, such as geometry proof related to lines and angles, sample items from the NJSLA high school test preparation for geometry, and the KeyMath-3 geometry subtest?

(d) What are the perspectives of the high school students with mathematics learning difficulties about the chunking intervention?

Three high school students with difficulties in learning geometry participated in this study during an in-school intervention program at a high school in New Jersey. The entire intervention, including the baseline and post-test phases, lasted approximately two months, depending on the participants’ availability and their sequences of introduction into the intervention. The outcomes of visual analysis indicated that participants improved their performance during the intervention phase as compared to the baseline phase in the geometry problem-solving test’s proximal measure. Compared to their corresponding scores in the baseline, most of the participants’ scores in the posttest showed significant enhancements on the transfer measures. Participants who underwent the maintenance tests sustained elevated performance levels even two weeks after the conclusion of the intervention.

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