Kwan Lung Chan 
How did the use of calculator affect the students’ attitude towards learning mathematics? 

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Didactics — Common Didactics, Educational Objectives, Methods, grade: 2.7, Education University of Hong Kong (Department of Asian and Policy Studies — Education University of Hong Kong), course: CUM3002 Comparative Curriculum and Pedagogy Studies, language: English, abstract: The implementation of using calculators in the Irish Junior Certificate Mathematics curriculum and examinations brought about discussions about its impact on students’ performance and learning attitudes. To compare the difference before and after implementation, we adopted experimental-type studies to find out the influence. There are two groups of Grade 9 students: the pre-intervention group and the post-intervention group. The research discovered that phase II students (using the calculators) got better Mathematics results and they thought using calculators can reduce the frequency of making mistakes. Despite such contribution, phase I students thought using calculators make students lazy. Based on our research, compulsory use of calculator in Mathematics education is a good decision, as it improved students’ Mathematics performance and students became more motivated to learn. The most important reason of this is because students think using calculator can help them save more time.