Effects of teaching calculator use and problem-solving strategies on mathematics performance and attitude of fifth-grade Taiwanese male and female students.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of teaching calculator use and problem solving on the attitudes toward mathematics, mathematics computation ability, and mathematics problem solving ability of fifth-grade Taiwanese male and female students.;The subjects were 193 (102 males and 91 females) fifth-grade students attending four schools of Chia-Yi City, Taiwan. Each of four classes randomly chosen from the four schools was assigned to a treatment group (i.e., traditional, calculator use, problem solving, and calculator plus problem solving).;The Arlin-Hills Attitude Survey (AHAS), the Test of Prior Computation Skills (TPCS), and the Mathematics Problem Solving Ability Scale (MPSAS) were administered before intervention began. After the researcher completed the pretest, the teacher in each class implemented a nine-week mathematics instructional plan appropriate for the treatment condition. After the intervention ended, the AHAS, the Test of Computation Ability (TCA), and the MPSAS were administered. Nine hypotheses were examined using three-way ANCOVA tests.;Findings from the study revealed that the traditional group had significantly lower scores on the test of attitudes toward mathematics than the calculator use and problem solving group (p ;Findings from the study imply that the instructional approach of combining the use of calculators and the use of problem solving strategies seems to be the best teaching method among the four levels of teaching treatment studied.;The recommendations for teaching mathematics drawn from the study are: (1) the skills of using calculators need to be regularly practiced to maintain proficiency, and (2) students' abilities to draw representation forms to portray their strategies for problem solving need to be improved.;The recommends for curriculum change are: (1) the required skills necessary for calculator use should be integrated with the sequence of mathematical concepts in the textbook, (2) the activities of mental computation, estimation, measurement activity, and problem solving should be paired with the use of calculators, and (3) many examples (exercises) of the textbook need to be revised so that various strategies can be applied in the textbook.