How automated feedback from a digital mathematics textbook affects primary students’ conceptual development: two case studies

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>One of the most prevalent features of digital mathematics textbooks, compared to traditional ones, is the provision of automated feedback on students’ solutions. Since feedback is regarded as an important factor that influences learning, this is often seen as an affordance of digital mathematics textbooks. While there is a large body of mainly quantitative research on the effectiveness of feedback in general, very little is known about how feedback actually affects students’ individual content specific learning processes and conceptual development. A theoretical framework based on Rabardel’s theory of the instrument and Vergnaud’s theory of conceptual fields is developed to study qualitatively how feedback actually functions in the learning process. This framework was applied in a case study of two elementary school students’ learning processes when working on a probability task from a German 3rd grade digital textbook. The analysis allowed detailed reconstruction of how students made sense of the information provided by the feedback and adjusted their behavior accordingly. This in-depth analysis unveiled that feedback does not necessarily foster conceptual development in the desired way, and a correct solution does not always coincide with conceptual understanding. The results point to some obstacles that students face when working individually on tasks from digital mathematics textbooks with automated feedback, and indicate that feedback needs to be developed in design-based research cycles in order to yield the desired effects.</jats:p>