| The purpose of this study was to (a) investigate what level of number sense was possessed by preservice elementary school teachers; (b) explore the correlation among mental computation skills, computation skills, affect issues and number sense, and (c) explore the cognitive process used by selected preservice elementary teachers on basic types of problems involving number sense.; The sample was composed of students in six intact entry-level mathematics sections of a course populated by preservice elementary school teachers. One hundred fifty-five participants from these six classes completed data collection tasks during the Spring 2002 semester for the study.; A combined quantitative/qualitative research design was employed in this study. The quantitative portion was based on a quasi-experiment design, with instruments administered two times over the semester. Affective data was also collected from each student. Additionally, problem-centered interviews were conducted.; Regression analyses were used to investigate the correlation of written computation skills, mental computation skills, and affective domain with regard to number sense. T-tests were used to compare the paired changes in number sense and mental computation skills across time.; Conference Learning Mathematics, Mathematics Anxiety, Effectance Motivation of Mathematics, Mental Computation Test score, and the Written Computation Test score were found to have a positive significance correlation with the Number Sense Test score success at the α = 0.01 level or better. Overall, the six independent variables considered in this study accounted for 57.1% of the variation in the Number Sense Test, with the Mental Computation Test, and the Written Computation Test having the strongest effects.; The participating elementary school preservice teachers' number sense and mental computation skills changed between the beginning and the completion of the undergraduate mathematics content course. This change was significant at the α = 0.01 level.; According to the interview data, the high ability group was more successful on each type of number sense item than the low ability group. Furthermore, for four of these item clusters (number magnitude, use of a benchmark, flexibility with number and operations and decomposition/recomposition of numbers), the high ability group had twice the frequency of correct responses of the low ability group. |
