The importance of motor activity in mathematics education. Embodied cognition and development of mental representation of numbers in children
This paper presents the review of literature concerning the importance of relationship between motor and cognitive activity in mathematical skills development. Cognitive and motor processing seem not to be related as well as the use of motor activity in the processing of numbers is far from an intuitive approach in mathematical education. A great number of studies show, however, that cognitive processes are embodied and therefore the involvement of movement in tasks requiring the participation of cognitive processes gives extremely positive results. This applies to both mathematics education practice in the case of children with normal development and those with a cognitive deficit in this area, called developmental dyscalculia. It is not surprising, therefore, the growing popularity of modern technologies that involve movement, which are used for cognitive math skills training, such as motion sensors, dance mats or educational games with elements of movement and dance. The beneficial influence of motor activity in mathematical abilities development is related to the spatial organization of representations of numbers arranged on the so-called Mental Number Line. It has been confirmed that such motor training develops and strengthens this spatial-numerical association, which is a predictor of skills of children in arithmetic.

The paper describes the results of a study whose aim was to explore correlations among the components of the construct Culture of problem solving (mathematical intelligence, reading comprehension, creativity and ability to use existing knowledge) and six dimensions of Scientific reasoning, which was tested by the Lawson’s Classroom Test. The total of 180 pupils from the Czech Republic aged 14-15 took part in this study. The results show that the dimensions proportional reasoning, control of variables and probability reasoning strongly correlate with the components mathematical intelligence, reading comprehension and ability to use existing knowledge.

Students solving mathematical problems on the blackboard are an everyday routine in Slovenian classrooms. On the other hand, it is commonly known that students often consider this situation as threatening. In order to highlight this phenomenon, Slovenian elementary pre-service teachers (N=242) filled out an Internet questionnaire about preferred teaching techniques. Only a third of the participants saw this teaching technique as an effective method for learning. In a pedagogical experiment, three teaching techniques were probed in a problem solving based mathematics course with combinatorial and probability topics. Empirical results showed no significant differences in knowledge according to experimental groups.

The presented study examines the relationship between high school students’ mathematics anxiety and learning styles. Subjects were 441 eleventh grade students enrolled in six different high schools. The data were obtained primarily from two scales, namely “Mathematics Anxiety Scale” and “Learning Style Inventory”. Quantitative research approach was used in analyzing and collecting the data. Results revealed a significantly positive relation between mathematics anxiety and an avoidant learning style. In addition, there was a significant negative correlation between anxiety and collaborative learning. Results also revealed that avoidant learning style was the strongest predictor of mathematics anxiety

The aim of this research is to study high-school pupils’ (9th–11th grades, 14/15 to 17/18 years old) self-regulated learning skills. The tool of the research is a questionnaire developed for this purpose; the research sample is a group of randomly selected high-school pupils from schools over the north-west part of Romania. The results show that only one third of the respondents think that mathematics is useful in everyday life and their future career; a very low percentage of the pupils set goals for learning mathematics; about a quarter of the respondents analyze correctly the task and have a correct task difficulty perception; the pupils’ self-efficacy and self-control is low, but they have a high self-judgement level. Most of the pupils are aware that there is a strong relation between the time they spend with mathematics and their results. There is a strong correlation between the pupils’ mathematical results and their interest to study mathematics, their task analysis and self-control skills, and their task difficulty perception.

This study aimed to determine the attitudes of primary school students towards mathematics in WebQuest based learning (WBL). A descriptive research model was used to determine the attitudes of primary school students towards mathematics in WBL. The participants of this research comprised 92 students (32 in the 6th grade, 33 in the 7th grade and 27 in the 8th grade), who took a WBL Course in Balıkesir run by the researcher. A questionnaire developed by the researcher was given before and aft er the course in the 2009–2010 fall semesters. The significance of the differences in the attitudes of the primary school students before and aft er the WBL courses were measured by t test and the students’ test scores were found statistically significant at the level of p = 0.05. At the end of the course, the attitudes of the primary school students towards mathematics developed in a positive way in all the classes.