• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.601-625
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• 2016

In this study, I hoped to reveal the understanding of pre-service elementary teachers about proportional reasoning and the traits of proportional reasoning strategy used by pre-service elementary teachers. The results of this study are as follows. Pre-service elementary teachers should deal with various proportional reasoning tasks and make a conscious effort to analyze proportional reasoning task and investigate various proportional reasoning strategies through teacher education program. It is necessary that pre-service elementary teachers supplement the lacking tasks such as qualitative reasoning and distinction between proportional situation and non-proportional situation. Finally, It is suggested to preform the future research on teachers' errors and mis-conceptions of proportional reasoning.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.457-484
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• 2015

This study aims to investigate an approach to teach proportional reasoning in elementary mathematics class by analyzing the proportional strategies the students use to solve the proportional reasoning tasks and their percentages of correct answers. For this research 174 sixth graders are examined. The instrument test consists of various questions types in reference to the previous study; the proportional reasoning tasks are divided into algebraic-geometric, quantitative-qualitative and missing value-comparisons tasks. Comparing the percentages of correct answers according to the task types, the algebraic tasks are higher than the geometric tasks, quantitative tasks are higher than the qualitative tasks, and missing value tasks are higher than the comparisons tasks. As to the strategies that students employed, the percentage of using the informal strategy such as factor strategy and unit rate strategy is relatively higher than that of using the formal strategy, even after learning the cross product strategy. As an insightful approach for teaching proportional reasoning, based on the study results, it is suggested to teach the informal strategy explicitly instead of the informal strategy, reinforce the qualitative reasoning while combining the qualitative with the quantitative reasoning, and balance the various task types in the mathematics classroom.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.21-58
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• 2015

The aim of this study is to look into the didactical background for teaching proportional reasoning in elementary school mathematics and offer suggestions to improve teaching proportional reasoning in the future. In order to attain these purposes, this study extracted and examined key ideas with respect to the didactical background on teaching proportional reasoning through a theoretical consideration regarding various studies on proportional reasoning. Based on such examination, this study compared and analyzed textbooks used in the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. In the light of such theoretical consideration and analytical results, this study provided suggestions for improving teaching proportional reasoning in elementary schools in Korea as follows: giving much weight on proportional reasoning, emphasizing multiplicative comparison and discerning between additive comparison and multiplicative comparison, underlining the ratio concept as an equivalent relation, balancing between comparisons tasks and missing value tasks inclusive of quantitative and qualitative, algebraic and geometrical aspects, emphasizing informal strategies of students before teaching cross-product method, and utilizing informal and pre-formal models actively.

• School Mathematics
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.819-838
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• 2016

This research analyzed proportional reasoning abilities of the 5th grade students who learned only the basis of ratio and rate and 6th grade students who also learned proportion and cross product strategy. Data were collected through the proportional reasoning tests and the interviews, and then the achievement of the students and their proportional reasoning strategies were analyzed. In the light of such analytical results, the conclusions are as follows. Firstly, there is not much difference between 5th and 6th grade students in the achievement scores. Secondly, both 5th and 6th graders are less familiar with the geometric, qualitative and comparisons tasks than the other tasks. Thirdly, not only 5th graders but also 6th graders used informal strategies much more than the formal strategy. Fourthly, some students can't come up with other strategies than the cross product strategy. Finally, many students have difficulties in discerning proportional situation and non-proportional situations. This study provided suggestions for improving teaching proportional reasoning in elementary schools in Korea as follows: focusing on letting students use their informal strategies fluently in geometric, qualitative, and comparisons tasks as well as algebraic, quantitative, and missing value tasks focusing on the concept of ratio and proportion instead of enforcing the formal strategy.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.57-79
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• 2022

Current mathematics It is necessary to ensure that ratio and proportion concept is not distorted or broken while being treated as if they were easy to teach and learn in school. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the activities presented in the textbook. Based on prior work, this study reinterpreted the proportional reasoning task from the proportional perspective of Beckmann and Izsak(2015) to the multiplicative structure of Vergnaud(1996) in four ways. This compared how they interpreted the multiplicative structure and relationships between two measurement spaces of ratio and rate units and proportional expression and proportional distribution units presented in the revised textbooks of 2007, 2009, and 2015 curriculum. First, the study found that the proportional reasoning task presented in the ratio and rate section varied by increasing both the ratio structure type and the proportional reasoning activity during the 2009 curriculum, but simplified the content by decreasing both the percentage structure type and the proportional reasoning activity. In addition, during the 2015 curriculum, the content was simplified by decreasing both the type of multiplicative structure of ratio and rate and the type of proportional reasoning, but both the type of multiplicative structure of percentage and the content varied. Second, the study found that, the proportional reasoning task presented in the proportional expression and proportional distribute sections was similar to the previous one, as both the type of multiplicative structure and the type of proportional reasoning strategy increased during the 2009 curriculum. In addition, during the 2015 curriculum, both the type of multiplicative structure and the activity of proportional reasoning increased, but the proportional distribution were similar to the previous one as there was no significant change in the type of multiplicative structure and proportional reasoning. Therefore, teachers need to make efforts to analyze the multiplicative structure and proportional reasoning strategies of the activities presented in the textbook and reconstruct them according to the concepts to teach them so that students can experience proportional reasoning in various situations.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.505-516
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• 2013

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the essence of proportional reasoning and to analyse the contents of the textbooks according to the mathematics curriculum revised in 2007, and to seek the direction for developing the proportional reasoning in the elementary school mathematics focused the task variables. As a result of analysis, it is found out that proportional reasoning is one form of qualitative and quantitative reasoning which is related to ratio, rate, proportion and involves a sense of covariation, multiple comparison. Mathematics textbooks according to the mathematics curriculum revised in 2007 are mainly examined by the characteristics of the proportional reasoning. It is found out that some tasks related the proportional reasoning were decreased and deleted and were numerically and algorithmically approached. It should be recognized that mechanical methods, such as the cross-product algorithm, for solving proportions do not develop proportional reasoning and should be required to provide tasks in a wide range of context including visual models.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.117-127
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• 1999

The present study investigated Korean and the US college students' scientific reasoning skills involving hypothesis-testing skills and tested the hypothesis that hypothesis-testing skills are more advanced ones than other scientific reasoning skills investigated in this study. Seven hundred and seventy-four(774) Korean and five hundred and sixty-eight(568) the US students were sampled in university level. The Test of Scientific Reasoning was used as a scientific reasoning test. The test is consisted of two conservational reasoning, two proportional reasoning, one pendulum, two probability reasoning, two controlling variable, one correlational reasoning, and two hypothesis-testing reasoning tasks. Korean students showed a significant higher score in proportional and probability reasoning tasks than the US students. However, the Korean showed a significant lower score in conservation and correlation reasoning tasks than their American counterparts. Further, Korean and the US college students showed a notably poor performance in hypothesis-testing skills comparing with other scientific reasoning skills, which supported the hypothesis that hypothesis-testing skills are more advanced ones than other scientific reasoning skills. In addition, the Korean showed a severe deficiency in candle-burning task which required the skill that students have to design a scientific test-procedure to test theoretical hypotheses. This study also discussed on the educational implications of the results of the present study.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.609-627
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• 2008

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between the students' strategy types and the recognition for proportional situations. The students' strategy types which were based on the results of ratio and proportion tests were divided into an additive type, a multiplicative type, and a formal type. This research analyzed the students' activities of categorization when were given the proportional problems and nonproportional problems to the students. And it also explored how to develop students' recognizing for the discrimination between the proportional situations and nonproportional situations. The results was the following. First, the students didn't discriminate the proportional situations and the nonproportional situations in the initial state but they came to discriminate little by little. Secondly, the students didn't discriminate the direct proportions and the inverse proportions until the last stage. Third, the multiplicative type was outperformed more than the formal type in solving the ratio and proportion problems but the formal type was outperformed more than the multiplicative type in discriminating between proportional situations and nonproportional situations. These results are interpreted as showing that solving ratio and proportion tasks and recognizing proportional situations are different aspects of proportional reasoning and it is necessary to understand multiplicative strategy with formal strategy in recognizing proportional situations.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.157-177
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• 2006

The concepts of ratio and proportion do not develop in isolation. Rather, they are part of the individual's multiplicative conceptual field, which includes other concepts such as multiplication, division, and rational numbers. The current study attempted to clarify the beginning of this development process. One fourth student, Kyungsu, was encourage to schematize his trial-and-error-based method, which was effective in solving so-called missing-value tasks. This study describes several advancements Kyungsu made during the teaching experiment and analyzes the challenges Kyungsu faced in attempting to schematize his method. Finally, the mathematical knowledge Kyungsu needed to further develop his ratio and proportion concepts is identified. The findings provide additional support for the view that the development of ratio and proportion concepts is embedded within the development of the multiplicative conceptual field.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.115-142
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• 2018

This research analyzed domestic researches on early algebra education which are published in six major mathematics education journals in Korea. The purpose of this work is to grasp trends of early algebra education in Korea and to draw up future tasks. From 2000 to 2017, 89 papers which are related to early algebra education published in 6 journals. The 89 papers were categorized by research period, academic journals, research topics, and research subjects. As a result, the number of researches on early algebra education in Korea has increased since 2000. Although early algebra education belongs to the field of elementary mathematics education, lots of papers were published in other math education journals than in the math education journals for elementary school mathematics. Most research focused on proportional reasoning across the algebraic content area. The majority of the research subjects were students, especially upper-grade students of elementary school. Based on the results of this study, some implications for early algebra education in Korea were suggested.