Computational Ability Of Primary School Children:A Comparative Study Between Ghana And China

Research on comparative evaluations of computational development in a cross-border perspective and the computing ability of children in different countries have been relegated to the background which has informed the current study to examine comparatively the fluency and accuracy ability between Chinese and Ghanaian children in mathematics.So as to provide research evidence for the external influence factors such as culture on primary school children’s mathematics learning,especially computational development.The study and development of mathematics in the early grades of education has proven to be a good background for computational fluency and accuracy irrespective of disparity in geographical location.The study adopted the quantitative research method to study and compare the level of fluency and accuracy among the children in China and Ghana respectively.The subjects randomly selected the first,third and fifth grade pupils from primary schools in Shaoxing City of China and Accra city of Ghana as representatives.There are 128 primary school students in China,including 45 in Grade 1,42 in grade 3 and 41 in Grade 5;and 100 pupils in Ghana,including 34 in Grade 1,33 in grade 3 and 33 in Grade 5.According to the teacher’s report,the subjects had normal or corrected visual acuity,and had no physical or mental illness.Children’s computational ability was assessed with the Basic Arithmetic Task,which has been designed for primary school children from grade one to grade 6.The task contained visually-presented addition and subtraction problems(total of 50 items).The number of items completed by children within the time limit is the score of computational fluency,and the score of correct number is used as the score of computational accuracy.In the study1,results show Chinese children’s computational fluency scores and accuracy increase with grades.The scores of third grade are more discrete.There was no significant difference in the fluency and accuracy of the calculation between different gender Chinese children.The score of computational fluency were significant positive correlate with the score of computational accuracy of Chinese children.The study 2 found there were significant difference in computational fluency and accuracy between grade 1 and grade 5 of Ghanaian children.The scores of computational fluency are more discrete in the third grade but not the scores of computational accuracy.There was no significant difference in the fluency and accuracy of the calculation between different gender Ghanaian children.The score of computational fluency were significant positive correlate with the score of computational accuracy of Ghanaian children.According to the results of study 3,we found the main effect of computational fluency and grade of Ghanaian children and Chinese children was significant,and there was interaction effect between grade and nationality.Second,there were also the significant main effect of computational accuracy,grade of between two country’s children,and the significant interaction effect between grade and nationality.The results suggest a great different development of calculation ability between Ghanaian children and Chinese children.The present study showed that computational fluency scores among Ghanaian and Chinese children increases with grades steadily in a progressive manner.However,there are differences in the development of computational ability between Ghanaian and Chinese children,which indicate that external factors such as culture may be the important factors leading to the differences in computational ability.In order to reduce the incidence of mathematics learning difficulties,teachers should pay attention to the role of cultural factors in primary school mathematics education.