Abstract:
Teachers\' beliefs and attitudes are known to guide the type of activities they implement in their classrooms. A traditional conception that finger counting is merely a back-up when children fail to use more sophisticated and efficient strategies could therefore prevent teachers from encouraging children\'s use of fingers in arithmetic tasks. However, the potential benefit of finger counting for young learners has been recently documented and setting aside its practice within classrooms may hinder children\'s mathematical skill development. It is therefore important to establish whether there is a discrepancy between teacher\'s beliefs regarding finger counting and the latest discoveries in this field of research. To this aim, we interrogated 413 teachers from preschool to Grade 5. We found that, despite being generally positive towards finger counting, teachers think that finger counting is typical of children who present math difficulties or lack of confidence, even during the first years of learning. These results are discussed considering what is known and what remains to be determined in the current scientific literature.
摘要:
众所周知,教师的信念和态度可以指导他们在课堂上开展的活动类型。传统的概念认为,当儿童无法使用更复杂和有效的策略时,手指计数只是一种备份,因此可能会阻止教师鼓励儿童在算术任务中使用手指。然而,最近已经记录了手指计数对年轻学习者的潜在好处,并且在课堂上搁置其练习可能会阻碍儿童的数学技能发展。因此,重要的是要确定教师关于手指计数的信念与这一研究领域的最新发现之间是否存在差异。为了这个目标,我们审问了413名从幼儿园到五年级的老师。我们发现,尽管总体上对手指计数持积极态度,教师认为,手指计数是典型的孩子谁提出数学困难或缺乏信心,即使在学习的最初几年。考虑到当前科学文献中已知的内容和尚待确定的内容,对这些结果进行了讨论。