The Effect of Response Cards on Preschoolers’ Engagement during a Mathematics Activity: A Preliminary Investigation

Children’s active engagement in early education settings plays an important role in academic and social development. One method for increasing active engagement is the use of response cards during instruction. Response cards are learning tools that allow an entire classroom to respond to a teacher’s question simultaneously by raising the card with the correct response. A multielement design was used to examine the effect of response cards on preschoolers’ active and passive engagement and interfering behaviors during a mathematics activity at circle time as compared to choral responding. Observational data on engagement and interfering behavior were collected for three students across the two conditions. While the response card condition had varying effects on the three students’ passive engagement and interfering behaviors, all three students generally showed higher levels of active engagement in the response cards condition than in the choral responding condition and reduced levels of interfering behavior.