• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.145-174
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• 2009

Based on the thinking that people can understand more clearly when the problem is related with their prior knowledge, the Purpose of this study was to analysis students' informal knowledge, which is constructed through their mathematical experience in the context of real-world situations. According to this purpose, the following research questions were. 1) What is the characteristics of students' informal knowledge about fraction before formal fraction instruction in school? 2) What is the difference of informal knowledge of fraction according to reasoning ability and grade. To investigate these questions, 18 children of first, second and third grade(6 children per each grade) in C elementary school were selected. Among the various concept of fraction, part-whole fraction, quotient fraction, ratio fraction and measure fraction were selected for the interview. I recorded the interview on digital camera, drew up a protocol about interview contents, and analyzed and discussed them after numbering and comment. The conclusions are as follows: First, students already constructed informal knowledge before they learned formal knowledge about fraction. Among students' informal knowledge they knew correct concepts based on formal knowledge, but they also have ideas that would lead to misconceptions. Second, the informal knowledge constructed by children were different according to grade. This is because the informal knowledge is influenced by various experience on learning and everyday life. And the students having higher reasoning ability represented higher levels of knowledge. Third, because children are using informal knowledge from everyday life to learn formal knowledge, we should use these informal knowledge to instruct more efficiently.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.181-197
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• 2023

The importance of reasoning processes based on fractional concepts and number senses, rather than a formalized procedural method using common denominators, has been noted in a number of studies in relation to compare the magnitudes of unlike fractions. In this study, a unlike fraction magnitudes comparison test was conducted on fourth-grade elementary school students who did not learn equivalent fractions and common denominators to analyze the reasoning perspectives of the correct and wrong answers for each of the eight problem types. As a result of the analysis, even students before learning equivalent fractions and reduction to common denominators were able to compare the unlike fractions through reasoning based on fractional sense. The perspective chosen by the most students for the comparison of the magnitudes of unlike fractions is the 'part-whole perspective', which shows that reasoning when comparing the magnitudes of fractions depends heavily on the concept of fractions itself. In addition, it was found that students who lack a conceptual understanding of fractions led to difficulties in having quantitative sense of fraction, making it difficult to compare and infer the magnitudes of unlike fractions. Based on the results of the study, some didactical implications were derived for reasoning guidance based on the concept of fractions and the sense of numbers without reduction to common denominators when comparing the magnitudes of unlike fraction.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.807-825
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• 2010

Educational interest has been paid to ADHD students. Because of being easily distracted, lacking concentration, and committing hyperactive acts, they lag much behind other students in academic grades and their teachers have many difficulties in teaching them. This study aims to provide a case of enhancing an ADHD student's fraction-related achievement. To do this, we investigated his mathematical abilities in a preliminary study, devised an individualized teaching for the fractions unit, and applied them to him. And analyzing the results from observations and interviews of the student we can induce the following results: First, the ADHD student showed such types of errors in relation to fraction as lack of the concept of dividing into equal parts, lack of the concept of numerator and denominator, and errors in adding or subtracting fractions anc mixed fractions whose denominators were the same. And secondly, the fraction-related achievements of the ADHD student have improved thanks to the systematic teaching plan based on the accurate understanding of his academic gap relative to other students, his learning attitude, and his time difference. In addition, this study suggests several implications for ADHD students' learning of fractions.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.62 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to explore how the student, who interiorized three levels of units, constructed fractions as multipliers by analyzing her ways of conceiving improper fractions with three levels of units and coordinating two three-levels-of-units structures. Among the data collected from our teaching experiment with two 4th grade students meeting 13 times for three months, we focus on how Seyeon, one of the participating students, wrote numerical expressions in the form of "× fraction" for the given situations using her splitting operation for composite units. Given the importance of splitting operation for composite units for the construction of fractions as multipliers, implications for further research are discussed.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.213-232
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• 2022

With the importance of number line in learning fractions, this study investigated how 4th grade students understand fractions and its operations in number line. The questionnaire consisted 22 items which were related to representing fractions, comparing the size of fractions, and operating addition and subtraction of fractions. Both structured number line and sub-structured number line were presented in the items. As results of the study, the overall success rates were not high and even some items showed higher incorrect answer rates than the success rates. Also, the students showed a difficulty in solving non-structured number line tasks. It was also noticeable that students showed several types of incorrect answers, which means that students had incomplete understanding of both fractions and number line. This paper is expected to shed light on elementary students' understanding of fractions and number line and to provide implications of how to deal with number line in teaching and learning fractions in the elementary school.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.17-37
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• 2015

In this paper, we compared and analyzed the Korean National Mathematics textbooks of the 2007 amendment curriculum and the Harcourt Math in America focused on fractions and decimals. To summarize the results of the analysis are as follows. First, both textbooks introduce fractions to the meaning of parts-whole concept, but the Harcourt Math is stronger than that of Korean Mathematics textbooks in the concept of unit fractions as a generator of fractions. Second, the fractions can be considered trivial materials - a fraction representing 1 whole, a fraction with it's denominator is 1 - were more clearly represented in our US textbooks than those of our Korean textbooks. Third, in the introduction of the term relating to the fractions, Korea is a strong point of view of the classification of fractions than the point of view of representation in comparison with the case of the United States. Fourth, the equivalent fraction and equivalent decimal concepts were described more detail in the United States of textbooks than those of the case of Korean textbooks. Finally, the approaches of fraction and decimal concepts were introduced more mathematically in the case of the United States than those of the case of Korean textbooks.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.129-147
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• 2019

Because of the various concepts and meanings of fractions and the difficulty of learning, studies to improve the teaching methods of fraction have been carried out. Particularly, because there are various methods of teaching depending on the type of fractions or the models or methods used for problem solving in fraction operations, many researches have been implemented. In this study, I analyzed the fractional operations of CCSSM-CA and its U.S. textbooks. It was CCSSM-CA revised and presented in California and the textbooks of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., which reflect the content and direction of CCSSM-CA. As a result of the analysis, although the grades presented in CCSSM-CA and Korean textbooks were consistent in the addition and subtraction of fractions, there are the features of expressing fractions by the sum of fractions with the same denominator or unit fraction and the evaluation of the appropriateness of the answer. In the multiplication and division of fractions, there is a difference in the presentation according to the grades. There are the features of the comparison the results of products based on the number of factor, presenting the division including the unit fractions at first, and suggesting the solving of division problems using various ways.

• School Mathematics
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.411-424
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• 2010

The fractional concept consists of various meaning, so that it is difficult to understand in primary school mathematics. In this article, we intend to analyze the cognition of 54 pre-service elementary teachers about the operations of partitioning and iterating that are based on Steffe's fraction schemes. The following fraction problem is used in this analysis: If the bar $\Box$ represent 3/8, then create a bar that is equivalent to 4/3. In our analysis, the 43% of pre-service elementary teachers can be well to treat the operations of partitioning and iteration. The 33% are use the equivalent fractions. But the 19% is not good. From the our analysis, it is important that pre-service elementary teachers must be have experimental(operational) thinking as the science education. And in this study we apply the operations of partitioning and iterating to the fraction activity of textbooks.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.477-490
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• 2011

The concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has been developed and expanded to identify essential components of mathematical knowledge for teaching (MKT) by Ball and her colleagues (2008). This study proposes an alternative perspective to view MKT focusing on key developmental understandings (KDUs) that carry through an instructional sequence, that are foundational for learning other ideas. In this study we provide constructive components of KDUs in fraction multiplication by focusing on the constructs of 'three-level-of-units structure' and 'recursive partitioning operation'. Expecially, our participating preservice elementary teacher, Jane, demonstrated that recursive partitioning operations with her length model played a significant role as a KDU in fraction multiplication.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.321-331
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• 2024

This study aims to analyze the difficulties encountered in the process of conceptualizing fractions from the perspective of metaphor. To achieve this, metaphors in mathematics education were examined by dividing them into natural conceptualizations through metaphor and their extension to educational metaphors. Subsequently, the difficulties in learning fractions through metaphorical conceptualization were analyzed from three aspects: the integration of multiple metaphors, interference from previously formed grounding metaphors, and the paradoxes of metaphor. Through this analysis, the study highlights the need for careful attention to how metaphors function during fraction learning and aims to provide insights for devising instructional strategies for teaching fractions.