Designing Instruction to Facilitate the Understanding of the Functional Concept: Based on the Situated Learning Theory

함수개념의 이해 촉진을 위한 수업 설계: 상황학습이론을 중심으로

The function is a basic and key concept to understand mathematical problems. However, many students have difficulties to expand the knowledge to other related concepts and to transfer the knowledge to real world problems. The reasons for the problem may be that the concept of function is taught by simplified and abstracted formula without fully understanding of the reasoning process. Also, the examples for the concepts are artificial and not related to students' experiences. Situated learning theory provides great implications to solve these problems. So, this study was designed to teach the concept of function more meaningful to students by appling situated learning theory. Thirty-eight middle school students were participated in this study. Students were provided the instruction designed according to the principles of situated learning theory. Then, they were asked to complete attitude survey questionnair and a performance assessment task. The result showed that the instruction based on situated learning theory was useful to Promote students' understanding and motivation for learning. More implications of the study was provided in the paper.