Utilization of abacus education to improve affective competency in mathematics education : Focusing on mathematics anxiety in elementary school students

The purpose of this study is to explore the possibility of using subject-based education to foster the affective capacity of mathematics subjects. If elementary school students who must have basic math skills lose interest in learning mathematics, they will be continuously affected by subsequent learning, For example, students eventually give up or avoid math due to 'mathematics anxiety', a negative emotional experience experienced in the context of a math subject. The 'affective domain', which has psychological attributes related to emotions, beliefs, and motivations formed by experience, is constantly emphasized in mathematics education policies as the importance of 'balanced growth in cognitive and affective areas' in elementary school students academic achievement is emphasized. Therefore, this study aims to examine whether the use of abacus education has a positive effect on alleviating elementary school students' math anxiety as a way to improve the ‘basic computational ability’, which is the ability to add and subtract natural numbers, as a way to alleviate math anxiety of elementary school students. It is hoped that abacus education will serve as an opportunity to recognize its value as a useful math teaching tool to strengthen the affective capacity of elementary school students' math subjects.