Abstract:

Mental computation is an important skill which is used even in the everyday life. It is a skill which can be developed by practice, to which primary school Mathematics has a decisive contribution. For correct and fast mental computations one needs to apply some learnt or invented strategies. Thus a primary school teacher should master many mental calculation strategies for all the four basic operations and she/he needs to be flexible in the use of these strategies.

In this paper we present a research made among 239 Primary and Preschool Pedagogy specialization students. They were asked to mentally calculate some operations, then write down the strategies they used. These strategies were analyzed and categorized. We counted the number of different strategies used by each student and classified these strategies in case of each operation. Also, some incorrect application of some strategies are presented. The results show that about one third of the respondents didn’t use any calculation strategies, they just mentally followed the written algorithms. One fourth of the students used only 1 or 2 strategies. As regarding the strategies they used, we identified the most different strategies for subtraction, but the easiest operation for students were additions.

The results of this research highlight the necessity of teaching mental calculation strategies for future primary school teachers.

Keywords:

Mental computation, mental computation strategies, flexibility in mental computation, Mathematics Education, pre-service primary school teachers.