Movement of Research in Mathematics Education in 1990's - focused on the master's theses in Korea -

1990년대 우리나라 수학교육연구 동향 - 석사학위논문을 중심으로-

In this study, the number of theses conducted in 1990's for the master's degree in mathematics education was investigated in terms of their fields and themes. These theses were analysed as to how much they had been studied according to the field and whether they had conformed to the expectations and requirements for research in mathematics education under the current educational curriculum. Futhermore, this study aimed to discover advancing directions of research in mathematics education. The results are as follows: First, the rate of annual thesis presentations decreased as many as 3.82% in 1994 compared with the previous year, but the rate increased steadily in the other years showing an overall annual average increase of 8.41%. Second, in the geographical distribution of thesis presentations among local provinces, Seoul represented the highest frequency at 41.13% and Cheju Island the lowest at 1.68%. When the annual thesis presentations were analysed among regions, their number increased steadily in Seoul, but fluctuated in most other regions. Third, regarding study themes, theses on mathematics education formed 70.91% of the total while those focusing on pure mathematics formed 29.09%. Among the theses of mathematics education, most were based on teaching curriculums and the least were based on education assessment. Among the theses on teaching curriculum, teaching analytics formed the highest rate. Theses on education technology, such as computerizing and computing, have shown to be increasing annually and formed 8.95% of the total in 1999. The study also indicated that especially in the late 1990's, there have been many designed programs based on the Web, like JAVA and CGI, and studies on teaching and teaming methods using the internet.