The Teachers Views on Soroban Abacus Training

Abstract

Soroban abacus training is called as mental arithmetic training in our country. It is known for mental arithmetic to increase the ability of four mode operations. Besides this, how is the situation for the students which are having Soroban abacus training in the terms of problem solving abilities, creativity, development of concepts, attraction towards mathematics, success in other lessons and their social relations with their peers? In order to find an answer to this question, this work studies the answers provided from the teachers of 14 students those are having mental arithmetic training which are aged between 7 and 12. In order to reach these students, the snow ball method which is a kind of improbable sampling methods had been used.  In this study for the students which are having Soroban abacus training are observed for the effect of Soroban abacus training for their problem solving abilities, creativity levels, understanding of the concepts, their attraction towards mathematics lesson, their success status for the lessons other than mathematics and their social relations with their peers. For the areas mentioned above, the answers and comments from mathematics and form teachers of the 14 students that are having Soroban Abacus training are collected. Descriptive analysis had been conducted for the results obtained from these interviews. As a result, relying on the reviews and comments obtained from the teachers, it can be said that the students which are having Soroban abacus training are performing better than their peers in terms of the areas mentioned above.