황혜정 Hye Jeang Hwang
DOI: JANT Vol.54(No.2) 119-141, 2015
As the population of senior citizens has been increasing very rapidly, the importance of their education is gradually emphasized. To maintain their mental and physical health, the solution on the biological, physical, and educational approach might be helpful and effective. Especially in the aspect of the educational approach, the mathematics education can be regarded as an important subject for keeping the seniors in a good mental health. The reason is that the ultimate goal of mathematics education is to pursue an enhancement of mathematical thinking ability. By the reason, this study aimed to develop mathematical materials for enhancing seniors`` thinking ability, and the seniors usually belong to fifties and sixties. To this purpose, this study selected the six essential mathematical thinking elements and four mathematical domains of ``number and operation``, ``shape and measurement``, ``possibility``, and ``patterns``. Based on these elements, the mathematical materials including the nine types of activities using games and commercial manipulatives were developed. On the subject of 52 female seniors, the instruction was conducted using a part of the materials during 100 minutes. Also, 13 survey items were developed beforehand, and the survey was implemented after the class, and eventually 48 seniors responded in the survey. As a result, it is meaningful to develop the materials not only for enhancing mathematical thinking ability but for understanding and utilizing the content of materials. Furthermore, it is requested that those materials be differentiated according to the degree or the difference of age, academic ability, and sex.