Students Mental Addition Strategies and the Effects of Strategy Training: A Longitudinal Study

Abstract

This longitudinal study was conducted in order to determine and improve the mental addition strategies of students in their 2nd and 3rd years at elementary school. The first part of the study used the qualitative research method of case study, while the second part adopted the single group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design. The study group consisted of 16 students who were attending grade 2 at an elementary school in Ankara, and who moved on to grade 3 the following year. In the first part, data were collected from the same students at the end of grades 2 and 3. In the first part of the study, no significant change was observed in the mental addition strategies of students who had passed from grade 2 to 3. In the second part, the same students were trained in “Mental Addition Strategies” for 5 class hours per week for a total of 6 weeks, and the final data were collected. Findings from the first part of the study showed that at both grades they used similar mental addition strategies. The second part of the study, on the other hand, showed that mental addition strategy training increased the variety of the mental addition strategies used by 3rd graders.