"Research on the Function of Abacus Mental Arithmetic Education in Developing Children's Intellectual Potential"
Research progress of this subject
From October to June, 2004/kloc-65438 China Abacus Association, with the strong support of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education, formulated a research plan, which was approved by an expert group organized by the Ministry of Education, headed by Comrade Bin Liu, and composed of experts from the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University, Peking University and Beijing Normal University.
On July 9~ 10, 2004, China Abacus Association and the research group of the National Institute of Educational Sciences jointly held a project kick-off meeting, and invited the leaders of experimental schools (parks) and relevant provincial abacus associations to attend, clearly explained the project requirements and operation methods, and fully discussed various cooperation, organization, coordination and management issues.
In September 2004, the project research work was officially launched.
I. Project research plan
Selection and teaching requirements of experimental schools (parks) for abacus mental arithmetic course
The pilot project was selected by China Abacus Association and provincial Abacus Association, and then recommended to the research group of National Institute of Educational Science. According to the actual situation of abacus mental arithmetic education and teaching, China Abacus Association decided to adopt the natural experimental research method, and each point decided its own curriculum setting mode, teaching materials and class hours according to its own traditions and practices. China Abacus Association has put forward clear requirements for class hours, that is, each experimental point should have no less than 2 and no more than 5 class hours per week, and the specific class hours should be decided by the experimental point.
(b) The research team of the National Institute of Educational Sciences develops research programs.
1. The research plan mainly measures and analyzes the promotion of abacus mental arithmetic teaching intervention and the overall development of children's intelligence in each school year through the combination of intelligence measurement and related investigation and research.
The content of intelligence measurement includes Wechsler's children's intelligence, Wechsler's memory, Raven's standard reasoning, attentional erasure and imagery ability in primary school. The questionnaire consists of nine items:
Questionnaire 1: Basic information of school (kindergarten)
Questionnaire 2: The teaching questionnaire of abacus mental arithmetic in experimental class.
Questionnaire 3: A questionnaire survey of teachers in all subjects of the experimental class.
Questionnaire 4: A questionnaire about the situation of teachers in different subjects in the control class.
Questionnaire 5: abacus mental arithmetic teacher questionnaire.
Questionnaires 6: The students' abacus mental arithmetic learning in the experimental class.
Questionnaire 7: Students' Off-campus Learning Questionnaire.
Questionnaire 8: A questionnaire on the formation and development of children's brain images in the experimental class.
Question9: Track the files of children in two classes.
2. According to the pre-test results, China Pearl Association has set up three kindergartens and seventeen primary schools as experimental schools. The measurement is divided into pre-test and multiple post-test (three post-tests in primary school and two post-tests in kindergarten every two years). The pre-test is arranged in September (freshmen in primary school and four-year secondary classes in kindergarten), and each post-test is arranged in June-July every year (the first batch of experimental sites in June and the second batch of experimental sites in July). The research group organized and trained about 150 doctoral and master students majoring in psychology from more than a dozen universities in the provinces and cities where the experimental site was located, with 6-7 people as a group, and regularly entered the experimental site simultaneously for measurement. During the test, the research group went to each point to check to ensure the scientific and accurate measurement.
3. According to the specific requirements of random placement provided by the research group, students in each experimental site are randomly divided into four classes according to gender, age, eyesight and handedness, with an experimental class and a control class, with more than 30 students in each class. None of the students in the two classes have learned abacus mental arithmetic. After the pre-test, the students in the experimental class began to learn abacus mental arithmetic. The research group strictly requires that the control variables such as curriculum, teachers, teaching materials and class hours of the experimental class and the control class of primary school students are the same, and all the above control variables except abacus mental arithmetic are the same in the two classes, so that the teaching intervention of sudden abacus mental arithmetic is the only independent variable and the intellectual change of students is the dependent variable. Apart from controlling the class not to study mental arithmetic outside school, it is not appropriate and should not interfere with other off-campus education factors of the students in the two classes. We can only analyze the influence of family education and external education on children's intellectual development through investigation. According to the opinions of preschool education experts of the research group at the project kick-off meeting, in the absence of strict teacher variable control, the habit of kindergarten education should be respected, but the teachers of the two classes should be as close as possible.
4. Based on the objective and neutral research standpoint, the research group of the National Academy of Educational Sciences conducted a strict inspection on the implementation of the project requirements in experimental schools.
Second, the inconsistency between the project research and the bidding documents of China Abacus Association and its role.
Because of the different teaching modes and schools of abacus mental arithmetic, we can only study the experimental points one by one and analyze the different effects of abacus mental arithmetic on developing children's intellectual potential under different teaching time settings. Therefore, as far as the subject is concerned, we can't generally say whether abacus mental arithmetic education has a good effect on developing children's intellectual potential, but only how abacus mental arithmetic education at each experimental point has developed children's intellectual potential. This does not meet the requirements of bidding. However, this actual situation is helpful to compare and analyze the different effects of abacus mental arithmetic teaching in different schools and different teaching modes in developing children's intelligence, and to sum up the advantages of each school so as to formulate an abacus mental arithmetic education and teaching system that can effectively promote children's intelligence development.
Three, the first batch of experimental school research results
According to the design scheme of the project, the role of abacus mental arithmetic education in developing children's intelligence can not be fully analyzed until the end of the project. This paper mainly introduces the two-year phased research progress of the first batch of experimental schools.
From the data point of view, under the strict experimental control conditions, compared with the control class, except for two experimental points, the abacus mental arithmetic teaching intervention in the past two years has effectively promoted the development of multiple intelligences of most children in the first experimental class, which preliminarily shows that the abacus mental arithmetic teaching intervention has a significant role in promoting children's intellectual development. From the comparison of the test scores of Chinese and mathematics between the two classes, the experimental class of abacus mental arithmetic is generally better than the control class. The situation of English test scores is quite special. Although the English scores of the experimental classes in most experimental schools are better than those of the control classes, it cannot be said that the English test scores are the transfer function of abacus mental arithmetic teaching, because a large number of students in both classes participate in various English studies outside the school. This preliminarily verified the learning effect of abacus mental arithmetic summarized by China Abacus Association, which is "learning one subject and benefiting from many subjects".
From the data point of view, the two experimental points that have not changed significantly have increased compared with the data of post-test 2 and post-test 1, but they have not reached the statistically significant level. The specific reasons will be introduced later.
Fourthly, from the measured data and survey results, we can see the key educational factors that restrict the effect of abacus mental arithmetic teaching on children's intellectual development.
The research on the teaching intervention of abacus mental arithmetic in two academic years shows that abacus mental arithmetic can significantly promote children's intellectual development. At the same time, a large number of investigations conducted by the research group further analyzed the key educational factors that restricted the realization of the effect of abacus mental arithmetic teaching in promoting children's intellectual development. However, the psychological mechanism of abacus mental arithmetic promoting children's intellectual development is not within this research task, and we are more concerned about the research progress of brain science research group led by Academician Tang of Zhejiang University.
According to the survey, the measured data are sensitive. For example, if random placement is not strictly implemented, the data of the two classes will be obviously unbalanced; For another example, as long as there are significant differences in any data of an experimental point, through the investigation of each point, we can certainly find the reason of the problem from the aspects of its teaching content, teaching progress, class hours or teaching methods.
Through investigation, the research group believes that the factors that affect the results of intelligence measurement data can be roughly summed up in three aspects: first, the curriculum, such as putting it in mathematics class or offering it as a school-based course alone, how to determine the number of class hours per week; Second, the teaching content and progress of abacus mental arithmetic; The third is the problem of teaching methods. Therefore, the problem can be summarized as two aspects: curriculum and teaching.
According to the survey data and analysis of the first batch of pilot sites, there are two ways to offer abacus mental arithmetic courses in each pilot site. One way is to continue the previous mathematical teaching experiment mode of combining three calculations, and combine abacus mental arithmetic as a variety of calculation methods in mathematics courses to gradually cultivate abacus mental arithmetic skills; One is to set up a separate school-based course of abacus mental arithmetic. The main reason why the effect of the above two experimental points is not obvious is that abacus mental arithmetic is set up in mathematics class as a diversified calculation method. The teaching and practice of abacus mental arithmetic knowledge and methods in each math class is less than 10 minute, and the amount of practice is obviously insufficient. The reason why abacus mental arithmetic can promote children's intellectual development depends on the research on the cultivation of operational skills and mental arithmetic skills in educational psychology, which requires reasonable training amount as a guarantee. In addition, setting abacus mental arithmetic in mathematics class needs more rigorous curriculum design research, because abacus mental arithmetic and mathematics both involve digital calculation, but they are very different. Curriculum design is to study whether and how to connect them reasonably. But we can see that there is no effective course analysis and design in these two experimental points. In the new mathematics curriculum, we still simply continue the previous experience of combining three kinds of calculations with mathematics teaching experiments to teach abacus mental arithmetic. The measured data show that this curriculum arrangement hinders the effective realization of abacus mental arithmetic to promote children's intellectual development.
We believe that abacus mental arithmetic, which aims at promoting children's intellectual development, is not suitable to be implemented in mathematics classes, and it is best to set up school-based courses separately. Of course, this also requires strict curriculum design, in order to realize the promotion of abacus mental arithmetic education to children's intellectual development.
Author: Jiang Zhifeng, Associate Research Fellow, China Academy of Educational Sciences.