In the 21st century's information-oriented society, mechanical technology has swiftly been replaced by information technology as a means to improve human civilization. To stay abreast with such a innovative change, the Internet is increasingly utilize...
In the 21st century's information-oriented society, mechanical technology has swiftly been replaced by information technology as a means to improve human civilization. To stay abreast with such a innovative change, the Internet is increasingly utilized in educating sector, and the roles of teacher gain in importance. In this information- oriented society, the importance of mathematical ability is accentuated. It affects across the board, and every field of society calls for a good mathematical ability and judgment. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to examine how the type of teacher intervention in online math activities affected the mathematical ability and attitude of young children. The research questions were posed as follows:
1. What differences do the types of teacher intervention in online math activities make to the mathematical ability of preschoolers?
2. What differences do the types of teacher intervention in online math activities make to the mathematical attitude of preschoolers?
The subjects in this study were 50 children who were enrolled at two different classes of a kindergarten attached to S elementary school in the city of Gwangju. They were five years old in American age, and an experimental group and a comparative group were formed with 25 children each. The groups were engaged in separate online math activities provided by two different web sites(http://www.skyblue.co.kr and http://www.yuanet.co.kr) for five weeks, three times a week. During that period of time, interactive teacher intervention was provided to the experimental group, and the comparative group was exposed to managerial, instructive teacher intervention.
As for the procedure of the study, pilot study and pretest were conducted first, and the five-week experiment was carried out. After that, posttest was implemented.
The mathematical ability of the young children was assessed by a Preschooler Math Ability Inventory that was based on Kim Ji-yeoung (2004)'s NCTM Math Education Standard. Concerning mathematical attitude, Hwang Jeong-suk(1996)'s modified Korean version of Mathematical Attitude Inventory was employed. These tests were conducted by having an individual interview with the young children, and the collected data on the math ability and attitude of the two groups were analyzed by SPSS 10.0 program and t-test.
The findings of the study were as below:
First, there was a statistically significant gap in mathematical ability between the two groups to which the two different types of teacher intervention were applied respectively. According to the posttest results, the collective average of the experimental group was higher than that of the comparative group. Besides, the experimental group that was exposed to the interactive teacher intervention scored significantly higher than the comparative group that was exposed to the managerial/instructive teacher intervention in the five math-ability subareas including number/ operation, algebra, data analyzing/probability, geometry and measuring.
Second, the experimental group to which the interactive teacher intervention was offered was statistically significantly different in mathematical attitude from the comparative group to which the managerial/ instructive teacher intervention was offered. Among the math-attitude sub factors, however, there was a significant intergroup gap only in confidence, and no significant difference was found in efficacy and intention of exploring alternatives. This finding showed that the inter- active teacher intervention was more efficient in confidence building than the managerial/instructive teacher intervention.
The above-mentioned findings illustrated that the interactive teacher intervention in online math activities had a favorable effect on the mathematical ability and attitude of the preschoolers, and that making a well-planned, interactive intervention in young children was one of efficient teaching strategies