Developing Preservice Primary School Teachers’ Mental Computation Competency by Games

Oct 15, 2026

Mental calculation is a crucial everyday competence and is especially important for future primary school teachers. This research evaluates how different game formats—didactic games, board-games, and mobile games—can develop preservice teachers’ mental computation skills. Results indicate that didactic games and board-games are effective when operations are presented visually, whereas didactic games and mobile games are more effective when operations are presented orally. Visually presented operations show no significant differences among game types, while orally presented operations favor didactic games.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages12

Reading Time30 min

AccessFree to download

1. Introduction

2. Studies on elementary pre-service teachers’ mental computation skills

DEVELOPING PRESERVICE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’MENTAL COMPUTATION COMPETENCY BY GAMES Tünde Baranyai, Edit Egri, Andrea Éva Molnár, Iuliana Zsoldos-Marchis Abstract: Mental calculation is an important competence in everyday life, and it is essential especially for a future primary school teacher. In this research the efficacy of different games, as didactic games, board-games, and mobile games for developing mental calculation skills were studied. The results shows that didactic games and board-games were efficient in developing mental calculation skills when the operations are presented visually, and the didactic games and mobile games, when the operations are presented orally. In case of visually presented operations there is no statistically significant difference between the effects of the three type of games. In case of orally presented operation the didactic games had a significantly higher effect on developing mental calculation skills as the other two type of games. Key words: mental computation, preservice primary school teachers, board-games, didactic games, mobile games 1. Introduction Developing pupils’ number sense is one of the most important goals of teaching Mathematics. Performing written and mental computation are competencies incorporated in number sense. But using written algorithms encourages children to follow different steps without thinking (Maclellan, 2001), while doing mental computation they understand deeper how numbers work (Reys, 1984; Maclellan, 2001) . Mental computation has been seen in two ways: as a basic skill or as a high-order thinking skill (Reys [et. al](et. al), 1995). As a basic skill, mental computation is just applying some learnt algorithms, the only difficulty is to choose the right one based on the numbers from the operation. As a high-order thinking skill, it requires the development of new computation strategies based on the properties of the numbers involved (Reys, Reys, Nohda, & Emori, 1995) . In many cases students try to use the mental images of paper and pencil algorithms for performing mental computation, but these are not efficient (Heirdsfield & Cooper, 2004, Varol & Farran, 2007). Thus McIntosh (2005) suggests that “delaying the introduction of written algorithms is beneficial to students”(p. 4). Hope and Sherrill (1987) highlighted that the unskilled students used mostly standard written methods for mental computation, while the skilled students used a variety of mental strategies. Mental computation is useful in the everyday life (Reys et al., 1995), but also contributes to the development of higher order thinking competencies, as creative and independent thinking (Reys, 1984), mathematical reasoning skills (Carvalho & da Ponte, 2013), and number sense (McIntosh et al., 1997, Verschaffel et al., 2007) . Thus the development of mental computation competency is very important. To achieving this goal, the teacher also needs to have good number sense (Whitacre & Nickerson, 2006) . 2. Studies on elementary pre-service teachers’ mental computation skills Tsao (2004) conducted a research among 155 pre-service elementary school teachers in United States, studying correlation between number sense, attitude towards mathematics, written computation skills, and mental computation skills. The results show that written computation skills, mental computation skills, and some subcategories of the attitude towards mathematics, as mathematics anxiety or confidence in learning mathematics, are in strong correlation with the achievement in the number sense test. Whitacre and Nickerson (2006) had a study with 13 pre-service elementary school teachers in United States about multiplication strategies with two digit numbers. During the intervention the researchers discussed four interpretation of the multiplication. One of the interpretation which was more emphasized is the rectangle/area approach. This approach of reasoning with models led to a large decrease in using men

FAQs

What competence does the research focus on and why is it important?

The research focuses on mental computation competency because it is essential in everyday life and especially important for future primary school teachers.

How do game types and presentation modes affect mental computation development?

Didactic games and board-games are more efficient when operations are presented visually; for oral presentations, didactic games and mobile games show stronger effects.

Are there differences among game types under visual vs. oral presentations?

For visually presented operations, the three game types show no statistically significant differences. For orally presented operations, didactic games have a significantly higher effect than the other two types.

Oct 15, 2026

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