주산식 암산이 시각장애초등학생의 암산능력에 미치는 효과

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of an abacus-based mental math program on the computation skills of an elementary student with visual impairment. This study was conducted following the multiple-probe design across skills. The participant was a third-grade boy, age nine, enrolled at D school for the blind. He was functionally blind (first degree of visual impairment) with a verbal IQ of 84 on the KISE-KIT. Preliminary evaluations indicated that he could use abacus for addition and subtraction but did not have any skills to mentally compute curriculum-based addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems. An abacus-based mental math program was designed to teach the student mental math skills in addition, subtraction, and multiplication. During the intervention phase, the researcher implemented the program for about 35 minutes per session (abacus practice for 20 minutes, mental math instruction and practice for 15 minutes) in a sequence of addition, subtraction, and multiplication. This study began on October 31st of 2007 and ended on February 29th of 2008. During the baseline, intervention, and maintenance phases, the student was asked to mentally compute 10 problems per session for addition, subtraction, and multiplication, respectively, given on a test in braille; the rate of correction and the speed in seconds for computation were measured to examine the effects of the program. The results of this study indicated that an abacus-based mental program was effective in increasing the student's correct rate of mental math skills in addition, subtraction, and multiplication. His correction rates for addition, subtraction, and multiplication increased from 20%, 28%, and 30%, respectively, at baseline phase, to 70%, 95%, and 72% at the intervention phase. In comparison with the effect of the program on the accuracy of the student's mental math skills, the program did not indicate the distinct effect on the student's speed for mental computation. The speed in seconds for mental math was, on the average, 56, 47, and 51 at the baseline phase and 54, 25, and 46 at intervention phase for addition, subtraction, and multiplication, respectively.