The purpose of this study is to describe theoretical orientations guiding research in mathematics motivation and to discuss findings in terms of how they facilitate or inhibit achievement. First, definitions of motivation and distinctions among types of motivation in education are discussed. Second, theoretical approach and representative research from these approach are described. Third, a set of generalizable conclusions about the contextual factors, cognitive processes, and benefits of interventions that affect students' and teachers' motivational attitudes are noted. Last, criticisms regarding instrument, assessment, and use of theories in motivational research are raised.

This study is to explore the ways in which the affective characteristics of Korean middle school students have been developed and the ways in which they have an effect on their mathematics achievements by using TIMSS (the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) data of 1995, 1999, and 2003. In addition, this study investigates the differences in affective variables between boys and girls toward mathematics. The result of the study indicates that the affective characteristics of Korean middle school students have changed a little, but that its effect on mathematics achievement increased a lot from 1995 to 2003. This study also shows that the Korean students study mathematics to get a job than to enter a university. However, girls have come to study it harder before going to college and it seems to have an impact on their mathematics scores; this happened in 1999. So we can infer from it that the decreasing in the difference between boys and girls in mathematics achievement may have been influenced by the girls' learning motivation to go to college. Lastly, it should be said that another analysis is needed to find out the reason for the devaluation of the importance of mathematics among the Korean middle school students.

This study is based on the grade 3 National Diagnostic Assessment of Basic Competency(NDABC) in 2005. The purpose of this study is to analyze the results of NDABC by students' gender. It was 19,257 grade 3 students that participated in this study. The average scores are 89.41 and 88.34 for each male and female. The percentage of Below-Basic level for male students is 4.6% and for female 5.6%. The percentage of female students at Below-Basic level is increasing for 3 years. In particular, the percentage of females at Below-Basic level is higher than that of males in the content of measurement, the cognitive domain of reasoning and problem solving, and the situation of real life. The item difficulty for males is lower in fraction, polygon, and right triangle than for females. But female students need to improve the space sense and the problem solving ability in real life. As for the background of students, males think that mathematics is exciting and not difficult in comparison with what females think. And parents of mates are more concerned about children's learning than those of females.

During the recent years at a middle level Engineering School located at the local areas in Korea, more than 20 percent of freshmen had failed at their first College Mathematics. In consequence, many of them had hard time to survive at their major curriculums. The purpose of this study is to look for the main reasons of their failure and suggest an alternation of the present curriculum. Using the responses to the questionnaires and placement test scores, we studied the characteristics of the students' Mathematical abilities and analyzed how they were related to their grades of the First College Mathematics at the end of the first semester. The mathematical ability of the students at the middle level Engineering School turned out to range from bottom to top even though most of them revealed their interests towards Mathematics. The students with low scores at the placement test were more likely to fail at their first College Mathematics. Thus we suggest that the school should open a new preparation course ahead of the First College Mathematics for those who achieve low scores at the placement test and also professors should write proper books and develop ways of teaching.

Students experience many problem solving activities in school mathematics. These activities have focused on finding the solution whose existence was known, and then again conjecture about existence of solution or posing of problems has been neglected. It needs to put more emphasis on conjecture and problem posing activities in school mathematics. To do this, a model and examples of designing mathematical activities centered on conjecture and problem posing are needed. In this article, we introduce some examples of designing such activities (from the pythagorean theorem, the determination condition of triangle, and existing solved-problems in textbook) and examine suggestions for mathematics education. Our examples can be used as instructional materials for mathematically able students at middle school.

This study was conducted to investigate the possibility of teaching tessellations' mathematical principles in elementary school mathematics. A survey was carried out and the two hours of the instructional experiment were developed for this study triangular tessellation activity and rectangular tessellation activity. Six fifth graders from W elementary school participated voluntarily in the instructional experiment. It was shown from the survey that teachers and students both know what the tessellation is, but they don't know what the mathematical principles really are in the tessellation. This is because they have just done the covering up-activities in class. It was seen from the instructional experiments that even ordinary students were able to understand the mathematical principles of the tessellation if teachers could throw the suitable focusing questions like 'how to move the rectangles making sides equal' and 'how to gather vertexes making angle $360^{\circ}$'. Furthermore, it is desirable to teach the rectangular tessellation prior to the triangular tessellation since the rectangular tessellation is more easy to deal with than the triangular tessellation.

This article provides how to implement the use of Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) in a teaching a function at a school to improve students' mathematization for their mathematical thinking using technology, This study was planed to get research results using the mixed methodology with quantitative and qualitative methodologies. 120 middle school students participated in the study to bring us data about their mathematical achievement and disposition. Through the data analysis used ANCOVA, the students with the experiment of the mathematization and technology excelled the other groups of students who were not provided with technology or both of them. In analysis of the questions of the achievement test, the problems for vertical mathematization were presented harder for the students than the other problems for horizontal and applicative mathematization. The technology environment might have helped students manipulate the application of real-life problems easier. This means that teachers can put more careful assignment on vertical mathematization using technology. We also explored that learning and teaching under RME using technology encouraged students to refine and develop their informal functional concept and pursue higher thinking of formalization. The study results in a lot of resources for teachers to use into their teaching mathematics for improving students' mathematical thinking.

In the article, representations useful in mathematics education are introduced and show how they are related in the context of mathematics education. They are classified in three categories: representations in mind, representations for understanding and problem solving, and mathematical representations.