| Number sense, a kind of mathematical instinct, is a new term advanced in the reformation of basic courses in mathematical education. It first appeared in the research of mathematical estimation, and has become part of the research in neuropsychology abroad in recent years. Number sense can be regarded as a kind of cultural product or cultural conduct. Based on the previous work in number sense done by other researchers, I probe into the training and developing of students' number sense from the perspective of ethnomathematics. This research mainly employs the methods of "qualitative analysis" and education experiment (survey test). Weizhou Island, a relatively close district of folk culture, is selected as the location for observation and investigation. I believe the facticity of the research object can be showed via the materialized image and description, and it is necessary for the researcher and the subjects to arouse sympathetic response through language.With regard to the research of testing students' number sense, a set of theoretical framework has been established internationally. In 1999, a large scale of number sense testing was carried out in many countries or districts such as Australia, Sweden, US, Taiwan, etc. Some items in this "number sense testing" and some items in the research of cultural influence on the developing of students' number sense by some scholars are compiled into two sets of number sense tests and applied to my research. One of the tests is for the children aged between 8 and 10, and the other is for the teenagers aged between 10 and 14. The purpose of these tests is to find out the number sense situation of the children aged between 8 and14 in Weizhou Island. On the basis of survey tests, five subjects will be selected for case study in the following tracking research. Weizhou Central Elementary School and Weizhou Middle School are the two locales for investigation. The investigation was conducted throughout the 8 months from August in 2003 to March in 2004. The folk culture in Weizhou Island belongs to the Hakka folk culture mixed by fishing and farming, and it has outstanding features in clan, religion and language. The research of number comprehension based on different village cultural backgrounds shows that various social communities in the island have continued their gesture counting systems particular to certain clans for hundreds of years, and these systems pass on from generation to generation like a genetic cell, telling the number sense particular to a certain community. Counting and calculating influenced by linguistic differences exists in the mathematics learning of almost any students in the island. For instance, the short pronunciations of Chinese numbers, especially in Cantonese and Hakka dialect, result in the differences of time span of memory and influence the students' calculation speed. Due to the diversified independent cultural communities in this island, diversified languages are spoken in the island, which has important influence on the students' memory. In the process of interviewing the students about mental arithmetic and oral arithmetic, II I found that switch of languages and the use of dialects are the crucial factors affecting their calculation speed. Meanwhile, different living customs due to different religions or villages also influence the development of students' number sense. The results of number sense tests according to different grades show that the scores of the students' number sense are based on the extension of number concepts and the abundance of number knowledge, while the increase of physiological age cannot necessarily lead to the development of number sense.The forming of students' number sense is closely related to physiological factors as well as cultural factors. The cortex of lower parietal bone in one's brain is the special area for counting, which is the physiological basis for developing number sense. The hurt of parietal bone will cause the lost of number sense. The cortex of lower parietal bon... |
PDF Full Text Request