• The Mathematical Education
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze the differences between the cognitive load of mathematics textbooks based on storytelling and traditional mathematics textbooks that are presented to students. In order to verify this, we have selected two 4th grade classes in elementary school that were identified as a homogeneous group through prior testing, and thus were separated into experimental group and comparative group. Then, without the teacher's lessons, the experimental group learned from mathematics textbooks based on storytelling and the comparative group learned from traditional mathematics textbooks. Afterwards, the two groups' cognitive load was measured through a questionnaire, and the following results were obtained: In the 'mental effort' and 'self evaluation' categories, the students that learned from the mathematics textbook based on storytelling showed higher scores than the students that learned from the traditional mathematics textbook. also there was statistically significant difference in some items. However, no statistically significant difference was found in the remaining categories 'task difficulty', 'self evaluation', and 'material design'.