• 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.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.23-38
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• 2022

The study provided a perspective on which readers can see Newton's proof heuristically in order to overcome the difficulty of proof showing 'QT²/QR converges to the latus rectum of ellipse' in the proof of the inverse square law of Newton's Principia. The heuristic perspective is as follows: The starting point of the proof is the belief that if we transform the denominators and numerators of QT²/QR into expression with respect to segments related to diameter and conjugate diameter, we may obtain some constant, the desired value, by their relationship PV × VG/QV² = PC²/CD² in Apollonius' Conic sections. The heuristic perspective proposed in this study is meaningful because it can help readers understand Newton's proof more easily by presenting the direction of transformation of QT²/QR.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.61 no.2
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• pp.339-357
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• 2022

This study explores pre-service secondary mathematics teachers (PSTs)' noticing competency. 17 PSTs participated in this study as a part of the mathematics teaching method class. Individual PST's essays regarding the question 'what effective mathematics teaching would be?' that they discussed and wrote at the beginning of the course were collected as the first data. PSTs' written analysis of an expert teacher's teaching video, colleague PSTs' demo-teaching video, and own demo-teaching video were also collected and analyzed. Findings showed that most PSTs' noticing level improved as the class progressed and showed a pattern of focusing on each key aspect in terms of the Teaching for Robust Understanding of Mathematics (TRU Math) framework, but their reasoning strategies were somewhat varied. This suggests that the TRU Math framework can support PSTs to improve the competency of 'what to attend' among the noticing components. In addition, the instructional reasoning strategies imply that PSTs' noticing reasoning strategy was mostly related to their interpretation of noticing components, which should be also emphasized in the teacher education program.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.62 no.1
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• pp.57-78
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• 2023

Students' engagement in lessons not only determines the direction and result of the lessons, but also affects academic achievement and continuity of follow-up learning. In order to provide implications related to teaching strategies for encouraging students' engagement in elementary mathematics lessons, this study implemented lessons for middle-low achieving fifth graders using open-ended tasks and analyzed characteristics of students' engagement in the light of the framework descripors developed based on previous research. As a result of the analysis, the students showed behavioral engagement in voluntarily answering teacher's questions or enduring difficulties and performing tasks until the end, emotional engagement in actively expressing their pleasure by clapping, standing up and the feelings with regard to the topics of lessons and the tasks, cognitive engagement in using real-life examples or their prior knowledge to solve the tasks, and social engagement in helping friends, telling their ideas to others and asking for friends' opinions to create collaborative ideas. This result suggested that lessons using open-ended tasks could encourage elementary students' engagement. In addition, this research presented the potential significance of teacher's support and positive feedback to students' responses, teaching methods of group activities and discussions, strategies of presenting tasks such as the board game while implementing the lessons using open-ended tasks.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.261-275
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• 2016

Many students have dualistic beliefs about mathematics and its learning- for example, there is always just one right answer in mathematics and their role in the classroom is receiving and absorbing knowledge from teacher and textbook. This article investigated some epistemic implications and limitations of common mathematics teaching practices, which often present mathematical facts(or procedures) and treat students' errors in a certain and absolute way. Langer and Piper's (1987) experiment and Oliveira et al.'s (2012) study suggested that presenting knowledge in conditional language which allows uncertainty can foster students' productive epistemological beliefs. Changing the focus and patterns of classroom communication about students' errors could help students to overcome their dualistic beliefs. This discussion will contribute to analyze the implicit epistemic messages conveyed by mathematics instructions and to investigate teaching strategies for stimulating students' epistemic development in mathematics.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.79-100
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• 2008

Freudenthal has advocated the reinvention method. In that method, the pupils start with a meaningful context, not ready-made concepts, and invent informative method through which he could arrive at the formative concepts progressively. In many face the reinvention method is contrary to the traditional method. In traditional method, which was named as 'concretization method' by Freudenthal, the pupils start with ready-made concepts, and applicate this concepts to various instances through which he could arrive at the understanding progressively. Through analysis, it turns out that Korea's seventh elementary mathematics textbook is based on concretization method. In this thesis, first of all, I will reconstruct probability unit of seventh elementary textbook according to Freudenthal's reinvention method. Next, I will perform teaching experiment which is ruled by new lesson design. Lastly, I analysed the effects of teaching experiment. Through this study, I obtained the following results and suggestions. First, the reinvention method is effective on the teaching of probability concept and algorithm. Second, in comparison with current textbook strand, my strand which made probability concept go ahead and combinatorics concept let behind is not deficiency. Third, tree diagram is effective matrix which contribute to formalization of combinatorics calculation. Lastly, except for fraction, diverse representation of probability, for example percentage or informal ratio expression must be introduced in teaching process.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.93-114
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to analyze mathematical the effects of problem posing activities on students' characteristics toward mathematics to encourage active learning. We will also examine various examples of the characteristics of the problems made by students with different mathematical characteristics. We chose one 6th grade group to conduct this research. From the results of this study, we obtained the following conclusions. First, problem posing activities are effective in improving students' mathematical interest and confidence, value recognition. Second, Students with different mathematical characteristics showed different results in problem posing activities. We confirmed the effectiveness of problem posing activities on students' positive characteristics of mathematics. In this regard, we were able to confirm examples of various problems that students made. In the future, we would like to propose generalization by conducting research on students of various school ages.

• School Mathematics
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.407-421
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• 2015

Linear system is a basic subject matter of school mathematics courses. Even though elimination is a useful method to solve linear systems, its fundamental principles were not discussed pedagogically. The purpose of this study is to help the development of mathematical content knowledge on linear systems conceptions. To do this, various representations and translations among them were considered, and in particular, the basic principles for elimination method are analyzed geometrically. Rectangular representation is used to solve word problem treated in numbers of things in elementary mathematics and it is useful as a pre-stage to introduce elimination. Slopes and intercepts of lines associated linear equations are used to obtain the Cramer's formula and this solving method was showing the connection between algebraic and geometric procedures. Strategy deleting variables of linear systems by elementary operations is explored and associated with the movements of lines in the family of lines passing through a fixed point. The development of mathematical content knowledge is expected to enhance pedagogical content knowledges.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.207-223
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• 2013

Teachers unfold a series of timeless mathematical symbols such as 5+2=7 in time by verbalizing the symbols in classrooms. A number sentence 5+2=7 is read in Korean as '5 더하기 2는(five plus two) 7과(seven) 같다(equals). Unlike in English, 5+2 and 7 are read first before the equal sign in Korean. This sequence of reading in Korean conflicts with the conventional linguistic sequence of writing from left to right. Ways of resolving the discrepancy between reading and writing sequences can make a difference students' understanding of the equal sign. Students would be in danger of perceiving the equal sign as an operational symbol, if a teacher resolves the discrepancy by subordinating reading sequence to linguistic convention of writing. This way of resolving results in the undesired phenomenon of changing the reading expressions in Korean elementary math textbook which represent relational notion of the equal sign into other reading expressions that represent operational notion of it. For understanding of relational notion of the equal sign, the discrepancy should be resolved by changing writing sequence in accordance with reading sequence. In addition, teaching of verbalizing the equal sign should be integrated with teaching of verbalizing inequality signs.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.49-69
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was to develop learning materials for the remedial curriculum, part of the 7th sequential differentiated math curricula, in an effort to fix the academic deficiencies of underachieving students, provide motivation to them and enhance their self-directed learning capabilities. The subjects in this study were the students in their second year of C middle school, who were in want of remedial education. After their mid-term and finals grades in the first semester of 2003 were analyzed to measure their academic deficiencies, remedial learning materials about math 8-A stage were developed, by modifying the textbook and existing materials, in consideration of 7-A stage. After they were utilized in remedial class, frequency analysis was conducted to find out what the students thought of the developed learning materials, and diagnosis evaluation was implemented to find out how many students passed the test, improve the materials, and suggest in which way their achievement could get better.