Teaching “bridging-through-10” as a mental calculation strategy to improve grade 4 learners’ number sense: Insights of cognitive neuroscience

Abstract

Mathematics teachers' cognitive closure increases as they struggle to understand how learners process mathematics in their minds when teaching mental calculation strategies (bridging through ten) to improve number sense. This paper seeks to use the insights of cognitive neuroscience to teach "bridging-through-10" as a mental calculation strategy to improve grade 4 learners' number sense. This qualitative study followed a participatory action research design to provide an intervention to two mathematics teachers about teaching bridging-through-10 as a mental calculation strategy to grade 4 learners in two weeks (10 days). Data were collected using the Ballard pretest, the Discussion forum, and the Ballard posttest. Data from the pretest and posttest were analysed descriptively. At the same time, narrative analysis was used to analyse data from the discussion forum. The findings revealed that the decrease in one mathematics teacher's cognitive closure due to cognitive neuroscience insights, with bridging through ten as a mental calculation strategy, improved learners' number sense. At the same time, there was no improvement in learners' number sense with the mathematics teacher, with increased cognitive closure and fewer cognitive neuroscience insights. This study concludes that bridging through 10 strategies with the insights of cognitive neuroscience can be used in grade 4 mathematics to improve learners' number sense. We argued that cognitive load in mathematics content and presentation must be decreased by breaking down mathematics content into manageable chunks to help learners develop number sense.