Analysis of the Factors Influencing Understanding of the Computational Estimation and Creation of New Estimation Materials

Research Project

Project/Area Number	04680306
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Education on school subjects and activities
Research Institution	Shinshu University
Principal Investigator	AMAIWA Shizuko Shinshu University, Faculty of Education, Associate professor, 教育学部, 助教授 (60060688)
Project Period (FY)	1992 – 1993
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 1993)
Budget Amount *help	¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000) Fiscal Year 1993: ¥400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥400,000) Fiscal Year 1992: ¥400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥400,000)
Keywords	Computational estimation / Computational strategy / Paper-and-pencil computation / Mental computation / 小学生 / 筆算能力 / 解決方略 / 理解 / 要因 / 教材開発
Research Abstract	Following three points were made clear through this research. 1. Elementary school children were given two kinds of computational estimation tasks : task to estimate the span of the answers on target calculation problems, and task to answer the most left hand numbers of the answer. Both computational estimation tasks had significant relationships with single digit addition and mental computation. Single digit addition and mental computation seem to be the fundamental factors of the computational estmation. 2. Children showed the following three computational strategies on actual shopping situations : (1)do the mental computation precisely to the last, (2)start the mental computation but change his/her strategy en route to get the rough numbers, and (3)round the numbers and add them. In spite of the no-training in elementary school about the strategy of computational estimation, children are able to devise several strategies in everyday situations. 3. According to the analysis of ANOVA, the important main factor influencing computational estimation was age, and "correcting error experience" was also the next main factor in two out of four computational estimation tasks. In "correcting error experience", children correct the other child's computational errors in shopping which was showed by VTR, and correct their errors in computational estimation tasks.