The past decade has seen tremendous growth in schools using technology for teaching core subjects. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated technology adoption, as school districts rushed to provide students with devices and access to online learning platforms to make remote and asynchronous learning possible. But as schools returned to full-time in-person instruction, daily screen use has continued to increase. A national poll of educators and district leaders by the New York Times found that by fall of 2025, nearly all schools provided devices for in-class use as early as kindergarten. 32% of elementary school teachers and 40% of middle and high school teachers said that their students average more than an hour of in-school screen time each day. 

Education technology has opened important pathways to improving math teaching and learning. Digital platforms provide immediate feedback and responsive supports tailored to students’ specific needs, offer built-in translation and language tools for multilingual learners, and make it easier to personalize instruction to draw on students’ interests. Digital math platforms allow students to manipulate visualizations and animations in ways that aren’t feasible with paper and pencil, and offer engaging interactive features. But as screens occupy more and more of children’s time and attention in and out of school, parents, educators and researchers are increasingly concerned about what they might be crowding out: rich classroom discussion, opportunities for social interaction and collaboration, and chances for students to exercise creativity, agency and sustained attention. 

There’s good reason to be concerned about the social, collaborative and synchronous aspects of math learning. When math teachers work to build relationships with each student and offer opportunities for students to solve problems together, they help students view themselves as valued members of a math community (Booker & Lim, 2016; Gray, et al. 2022; Maloney & Matthews, 2020; Shifrer et al., 2023). Classroom math discourse, where students practice articulating their own thinking and critiquing peers’ solutions, allows students to solidify their conceptual understanding and see themselves as capable math thinkers (Huinker, et al., 2014). 

Students who feel they belong in their math classrooms and who think of themselves as “math people” are more likely to continue taking math in high school and postsecondary education (Hughes, et al., 2015; Joseph, et al., 2019; Morales-Chica & Graham, 2021). Black and Latinx students, who face persistent bias and unequal access to math classrooms that emphasize discourse and collaboration, tend to experience declines in math engagement and belonging during middle school (Hamm & Faircloth, 2005; Wang & Eccles, 2012). 

Belonging and identity were at the center of our recent study on Amplify Desmos Math digital lessons used as a supplement to core Tier 1 instruction in NYC middle schools serving mostly Latinx and Black students with high economic need. Amplify Desmos Math (ADM) is designed for in-class, synchronous use, emphasizing conceptual understanding, exploration, and collaboration. The ADM digital platform provides a set of teacher tools designed to help teachers structure work time, facilitate whole-class discussion, and to elevate examples of student thinking as the basis for math discourse. 

One finding stood out: students’ perceptions of how their teachers created opportunities for belonging shaped their math experiences and self-perceptions. We used a survey measure adapted from Gray and colleagues’ (2022) research on how teacher-facilitated opportunities to belong shape engagement across the school day for middle school students of color. Questions include “my math teacher lets us ask for help when we need it,” “my math teacher makes me feel like my ideas and opinions matter, “ and “my math teacher connects what we are learning in school with my life outside of school.”

We found that students’ ratings of their opportunities to belong in math class predicted growth in their math engagement, belonging, enjoyment and identity. The graph below shows changes in survey measures of belonging and other outcomes from spring 2024 to spring 2025 for students in classrooms using ADM lessons. 

Students across racial groups who reported high opportunity to belong saw gains, most of them statistically significant, on all measures. Students reporting low opportunity to belong saw a mix of gains and losses. 

Figure 1. Baseline to post changes in math identity, math enjoyment, math belonging and math engagement for students with low and high opportunities to belong by race. 

Source: Research Alliance calculations based on data obtained from NYC Public Schools.
Note: Color indicates a statistically significant difference between baseline and post scores within each racial/ethnic group, n = 394-396. We set the cut-off for high opportunity to belong at a mean of 2.5 on a four-point scale, corresponding to a score between “somewhat true” and “very true.”

These survey findings are consistent with what we heard from students in focus groups about their math class experiences. Students reflected that opportunities to work with their friends, and to seek or offer help to their peers, were key to their belonging. They said that they belong when teachers create math classrooms where all students’ ideas are valued; as one student put it, “when the teacher is open to any answers and gives the same reaction to any student… they treat us fairly and you can’t tell if they have favorites or not.” Students connected their sense of belonging to classroom cultures where mistakes are seen as part of learning and questions are welcome.

We saw teachers and students use digital lessons in ways that fostered opportunities to belong. Teachers reported that using ADM digital lessons helped them build positive classroom communities, emphasize problem-solving, and facilitate discussions around student thinking. The ADM digital lessons we observed typically alternated between students collaborating in pairs or small groups to work through a set of related screens, and whole-class discussions where teachers invited students to share ideas and compare strategies. We observed teachers monitoring student progress through the teacher dashboard and circulating through the classroom to provide encouragement, ask students to explain their decisions, and pose strategic questions to support problem solving. 

A key feature of ADM digital lessons helped teachers center whole-class discussions around students’ own thinking. The “snapshot” facilitation move allows teachers to select, sequence and display examples of student work to the class, with the option to anonymize snapshots by replacing students’ names with the names of diverse mathematicians. We saw teachers use anonymized snapshots of incomplete or incorrect solutions to normalize mistakes as part of the learning process and invite students to build on each other’s thinking. Displaying snapshots of different approaches, teachers invited students to compare and contrast strategies and make connections between representations.

Students’ ratings of their enjoyment and understanding in end-of-lesson reflections were statistically significantly higher when teachers used the “snapshot” move. Based on students’ reflections during focus groups, effective use of snapshots facilitated inclusive discussions and helped students see themselves and their peers as sources of important math ideas, rather than relying on the teacher. One student described how snapshots supported collaborative problem solving: 

If the teacher puts [a classmate’s] strategy on the board, I'm trying to look at the strategy that they use and trying to reverse it and to make another way to find the resolution… A problem is never going to be resolved by one person. It's always a few.

Another reflected, “This is the math grade that feels like one of the best ones so far because no one judges and you can share your answer whether it's right or wrong.”

What does this mean for digital math tools? This research offers evidence that digital math tools can be designed to enhance social and collaborative aspects of math learning and give teachers new tools to support belonging in math classrooms. Despite promising findings, ADM digital lesson implementation was inconsistent across classrooms in our study, and teachers used snapshots and other facilitation moves in less than half of lessons. Teachers need ample time and support to develop instructional strategies that help all students see themselves as capable members of math communities and to integrate digital tools into their practice in ways that support that goal. As digital tools become more deeply entrenched in core instruction, educators and researchers should pay close attention to how they expand or constrain opportunities for students to belong.

Read more about this research and the NYC Partnership for Math Equity here. 

References

Booker, K. C., & Lim, J. H. (2016). Belongingness and pedagogy: Engaging African American girls in middle school mathematics. Youth & Society, 50(8).

Gray, D. L, Harris-Thomas, B., Ali, J. N., Cummings, T. N., McElveen, T. L., & Jones, T. R. (2022). Urban middle-schoolers' opportunities to belong predict fluctuations in their engagement across the school day. Urban Education, 59(9): 1-36.

Hamm, J. V. & Faircloth, B. S. (2005). The role of friendship in adolescents’ sense of school belonging. New Directions in Child Development, 107: 61-78.

Maloney, T. & Matthews, J.S. (2020). Teachers’ critical care and students’ feelings of connectedness in the urban mathematics classroom. Journal Of Research In Mathematics Education, 51(4), 399-432..

Shifrer, D., Phillippo, K., Tilbrook, N., & Morton, K. (2023). The relationship between ninth graders’ perceptions of teacher equity and their math identity: Differences by student race and school racial composition. Sociology of education, 96(2), 129-148.

Wang, M.-T. & Eccles, J. S. (2012). Social support matters: Longitudinal effects of support on three dimensions of school engagement from middle to high school. Child Development, 83(3), 877-895.