Educational Research (ISSN: 2141-5161) Vol. 2(11) pp. 1661-1666 November 2011
Available online@ http://www.interesjournals.org/ER
Copyright © 2011 International Research Journals
Full Length Research paper
Study of the effect of efficiency and teachers’ opinions
about cooperative learning on perception of
mathematical conceptions for blind students
Maryam Najafi*, Mohsen Rostamy-Malkhalifeh, Poorya Pezeshki and Parvaneh Amiripour
Department of Mathematics, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran.
Accepted 18 October, 2011
The necessity of special education has been studied in regard to various views in present decade.
Study of these views has led to implementation of modern method instruction in present research in
mathematics class of blind students. The aim of this research is to study the effect of cooperative
learning on perception of mathematical conceptions in elementary blind students and opinions of their
teachers in Tehran. Research method is quasi-experimental. Cooperative learning method is performed
on 40 blind students in third grade through cluster sampling. Twenty (20) opinions of teachers related
to blind students were taken and it is shown that implementing cooperative learning is proper for
elementary blind students in perception of mathematical conceptions field through math exam,
questionnaire and statistical analysis; independent samples and one sample sign tests with meaningful
level of 0.05.
Keywords: Mathematics education, cooperative learning, mathematical conception, teachers, blind students.
INTRODUCTION
Special children are people that depend on special
education and services until they can use their whole
human capacity. They need special education because
their defects differ in one or several categories such as;
those who do not have brain, learning disabilities,
emotion disorders, physical disabilities, verbal disabilities,
auditory agnosia and visual agnosia (Halahan et al,
1999). A blind person who has weak vision cannot use
visual methods and his or her vision rate is less than
20/200; and/ his or her vision angle is less than zero
degree (Shafiee et al., 2006).
Experience of education is visual in normal classes, but
same instructional principles can be used for blind
students through changes in methods (Maher, 1999).
Often, specialists believe that they can use same general
method for both the blind and perspicacious students;
although some changes are needed, but they need
instructional principles which they rely on to achieving
more information themselves (Javadian, 1998). If
instruction emphasizes learning dynamic sense and
auditory, for visual amnesia students, it is very beneficial
*Corresponding Author E-mail: maryam0866@gmail.com.
(Mehrmohammady, 1995). Blind people need special
instruction for efficiency in relating to society and to be
independent (Shafiee et al., 2006). Piheyz (1941)
believes that blindness does not lead to less intelligence
automatically. Based on neurotic structure, and because
the blind have disability in one of their senses, their other
intelligent hemisphere which relates to logical and
mathematical analysis is more active than that of other
people. Most blind people have higher quantity of
intelligence, and if combined, this intelligence leads to
self-belief, allowing the achievement of great success.
Mathematical learning is not impossible to the blind
unless one has difficulty in learning mechanically. This is
because some blind people have intelligence and
penchant to mathematics learning like common people;
blinds differ in capacity and level learning like common
people. In general, if mechanism of instruction is correct
and proper to their learning capacities, there will not be
problem in passing instruction to the blind (Behbahany,
2005).
Learning has different procedures and methods; and
traditional learning which has enveloped our education
for several years does not respond to the needs of
students and teachers (Parsa, 1997). Direct instructional
methods were unilateral and obligation of teacher is to