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Paper&Pencil Skills in the 21st Century, a Dichotomy?

There is a worldwide development, better to say a non-development: We teach paper & pencil skills in primary schools almost like we did 30 or 50 or 100 years ago. Till today the primary school teachers spend up to more than 100 hours in the class room to teach and to train old fashioned algorithms though in daily life situations and for business purposes everybody uses a calculator. Why do we waste so much time of our children to teach them things which later on they will not need? We see an emotional dichotomy. Despite the research results from many research projects in many countries there still is the fear that the use of calculators in primary grades will harm mental arithmetic and estimation skills. To explain and to overcome that fear we will reflect the nature of number sense and of paper&pencil skills more carefully. We realize that the development of number sense is an intuitive and unconscious mental process while the ability to get an exact calculation result is trained logically and consciously. To overcome the above dichotomy we must solve the hidden dichotomy number sense versus precise calculation result. We need a new balance. Different types of examples will be given how we can further the development of number sense in a technology dominated curriculum.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa.de:bsz:14-qucosa-80642
Date07 May 2012
CreatorsMeissner, Hartwig, Diephaus, Annabella
ContributorsHTW Dresden, Informatik, Mathematik
PublisherSaechsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek Dresden
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typedoc-type:conferenceObject
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceProceedings of the tenth International Conference Models in Developing Mathematics Education. - Dresden : Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, 2009. - S. 404 - 408

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