Author Description

This study was conducted to obtain information related to mental computation from students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9 in Western Australia. The numbers of subjects were 163, 163, 163 and 152 in years 3, 5, 7, and 9, respectively. The research was designed to provide three different perspectives of mental computation: (1) a survey of the kinds of computations which students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9 prefer to do mentally; (2) a measure of attitude towards mental and written computation of students in Years 5, 7, and 9; and (3) an assessment of mental computation performance of students in Years 3, 5, 7, and 9. Major findings revealed that: (1) the great majority of students in Years 5, 7, and 9 felt it was important to be good at mental computation; (2) students tended to consider that written computation was mostly learned at school but mental computation was mostly learned outside of school; and (3) the more able the students, the better they could predict whether or not they could undertake a computation mentally. This self-confidence varied considerably both within and across year levels. Implications for curriculum development and teaching practice in the mathematics classroom are discussed. They include: (1) The curriculum needs to be much more flexible to cater to the wide range of ability; (2) Emphasizing skills at the expense of understanding is unlikely to prove effective; and (3) Real life computation involves mental computation and/or calculator use, so classroom teaching should emphasize these aspects rather than traditional paper and pencil algorithms. (MKR).