This paper presents part of an on-going experience about one strategy to incorporate multimedia curricular materials in the preparation of educational psychologists in a specific domain: the comprehension and promotion of arithmetical thinking of grade school children.
The experience we describe here is performed within curricular activities of psychology career in the Facultad de Estudios Superiores Zaragoza of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. During the fourth and fifth semesters of this career, students review different topics about educational psychology. In a practical activity, students are confronted with a specific educational problematic: the low school achievement in the three first grades of grade school. To attend this problematic, in the area of the learning and teaching of arithmetic, it was created a program that permits to psychology students: a) understand the construction processes of arithmetical knowledge among children in the firsts grades of primary school, which their teachers consider to be low in school performance; b) to evaluate such processes, and also to identify the difficulties arising from the learning of certain arithmetical contents; and c) to design and apply didactical activities which might encourage a competent use of the children’s arithmetical knowledge.
The successive application of the program throughout several years along with the technological advance in the matter of information and communication, took to consider the necessity to incorporate multimedia materials in the psychology students’ teaching. For this, it was established a strategy that allows the organization of the design, develop, application and evaluation of these materials. We believe that curricular multimedia materials are relevant to show characteristics of children’s arithmetical thinking. Therefore, we try to create accurate, accessible, and high quality training multimedia materials that help psychology students to comprehend the arithmetical behavior and reasoning that children use when they are confronted with school arithmetical tasks.