A Study of Realistic Mathematics Education - Focusing on the learning of algorithms in primary school -

현실적 수학교육에 대한 고찰 - 초등학교의 알고리듬 학습을 중심으로 -

This study aims to reflect the basic principles and teaching-teaming principles of Realistic Mathematics Education in order to suppose an way in which mathematics as an activity is carried out in primary school. The development of what is known as RME started almost thirty years ago. It is founded by Freudenthal and his colleagues at the former IOWO. Freudenthal stressed the idea of matheamatics as a human activity. According to him, the key principles of RME are as follows: guided reinvention and progressive mathematisation, level theory, and didactical phenomenology. This means that children have guided opportunities to reinvent mathematics by doing it and so the focal point should not be on mathematics as a closed system but on the process of mathematisation. There are different levels in learning process. One should let children make the transition from one level to the next level in the progress of mathematisation in realistic contexts. Here, contexts means that domain of reality, which in some particular learning process is disclosed to the learner in order to be mathematised. And the word of 'realistic' is related not just with the real world, but is related to the emphasis that RME puts on offering the students problem situations which they can imagine. Under the background of these principles, RME supposes the following five instruction principles: phenomenological exploration, bridging by vertical instruments, pupils' own constructions and productions, interactivity, and interwining of learning strands. In order to reflect how to realize these principles in practice, the teaming process of algorithms is illustrated. In this process, children follow a learning route that takes its inspiration from the history of mathematics or from their own informal knowledge and strategies. Considering long division, the first levee is associated with real-life activities such as sharing sweets among children. Here, children use their own strategies to solve context problems. The second level is entered when the same sweet problems is presented and a model of the situation is created. Then it is focused on finding shortcomings. Finally, the schema of division becomes a subject of investigation. Comparing realistic mathematics education with constructivistic mathematics education, there interaction, reflective thinking, conflict situation are many similarities but there are alsodifferences. They share the characteristics such as mathematics as a human activity, active learner, etc. But in RME, it is focused on the delicate balance between the spontaneity of children and the authority of teachers, and the development of long-term loaming process which is structured but flexible. In this respect two forms of mathematics education are different. Here, we learn how to develop mathematics curriculum that respects the theory of children on reality and at the same time the theory of mathematics experts. In order to connect the informal mathematics of children and formal mathematics, we need more teachers as researchers and more researchers as observers who try to find the mathematical informal notions of children and anticipate routes of children's learning through thought-experiment continuously.