• School Mathematics
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.619-632
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• 2013

One area where research is especially needed is their elaboration process and how they elaborate their idea as a group in a mathematical board game re-creation project. In this research, this process was named 'Mathematical Elaboration Process'. The purpose of this research is to understand how the gifted children elaborate their idea in a small group, and which idea can be chosen for a new board game when they are exposed to a project for making new mathematical board games using the what-if-not strategy. One of the gifted children's classes was chosen in which there were twenty students, and the class was composed of four groups in an elementary school in Korea. The researcher presented a series of re-creation game projects to them during the course of five weeks. To interpret their process of elaborating, the communication of the gifted students was recorded and transcribed. Students' elaboration processes were constructed through the interaction of both the mathematical route and the non-mathematical route. In the mathematical route, there were three routes; favorable thoughts, unfavorable thoughts and a neutral route. Favorable thoughts was concluded as 'Accepting', unfavorable thoughts resulted in 'Rejecting', and finally, the neutral route lead to a 'non-mathematical route'. Mainly, in a mathematical route, the reason of accepting the rule was mathematical thinking and logical reasons. The gifted children also show four categorized non-mathematical reactions when they re-created a mathematical board game; Inconsistency, Liking, Social Proof and Authority.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.657-677
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• 2014

The present qualitative case study explored the ways in which three middle school students constructed and refined their mathematical models and modeling processes, and factors that had influenced such refinement. The results suggest that students' modeling processes are non-sequential in that the participant students reformulated their initial problem from the real-world problem situation and revised the model when they could not get a satisfactory solution or the acquired solution did not make sense. Moreover, the students' model refinement processes were affected by the following four elements: the types of real-word problem situations, students' metacognitive thinking, communications between teachers and peers, and the role of teachers.

• School Mathematics
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.467-486
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• 2007

In mathematical modeling activity modeling process is usually an iterative process. When model can not be solved, the model needs to be simplified by treating some variables as constants, or by ignoring some variables. On the other hand, when the results from the model are not precise enough, the model needs to be refined by considering additional conditions. In this study we investigate the role of spreadsheet model in model refinement and modeling process. In detail, we observed that by using spreadsheet model students can solve model which can not be solved in paper-pencil environment. And so they need not go back to model simplification process but continue model refinement. By transforming mathematical model to spreadsheet model, the students can predict or explain the real word situations directly without passing the mathematical conclusions step in modeling process.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.73-84
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• 2010

Mathematical modeling is an important part of mathematics education since it can be used or created to find mathematical models to understand real life various situations. Most of mathematical modeling tasks taught and learned currently in secondary school mathematics classes need simple mathematical modelling with one or two variables and produce fixed solutions to the real life problems. But many real life problems involve various and complex variables which can be used to get more proper solutions. Constructing mathematical models to get more appropriate solutions from the real problems having various and complex variables is not easy. In this paper the researcher suggested a model to fit mathematical models to get more appropriate solutions and showed three examples to apply the model in solving real life problems which can be treated in the secondary school mathematics classrooms.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.19 no.1 s.21
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• pp.305-306
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• 2005

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.44 no.4 s.111
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• pp.627-651
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• 2005

This study was conducted to attain an in-depth understanding of students' mathematical representations and to present the educational implications for teaching them. Twelve mathematical tasks were developed according to the six types of problems. A task performance was executed to 151 third graders from four classes in DaeJeon and GyeongGi. We analyzed the types and forms of representations generated by them. Then, qualitative case studies were conducted on two small-groups of five from two classes in GyeongGi. We analyzed how individuals' representations became elaborated into group representation and what patterns emerged during the collaborative small-group learning. From the results, most students used more than one representation in solving a problem, but they were not fluent enough to link them to successful problem solving or to transfer correctly among them. Students refined their representations into more meaningful group representation through peer interaction, self-reflection, etc.. Teachers need to give students opportunities to think through, and choose from, various representations in problem solving. We also need the in-depth understanding and great insights into students' representations for teaching.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.507-539
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• 2014

The algebra is an important tool influencing on a mathematics in general. To make good use of the algebra, it is necessary to transfer from a given situation to a proper algebraic representation. But some research in related to algebraic word problems have reported the difficulty changing to a proper algebraic representation. Our study have focused on transformation and elaboration of algebraic representation. We investigated in detail the responses and perceptions of 29 Grade 7 students while transforming to algebraic representation, only concentrating on the literature expression form the problematic situations given. Most of students showed difficulties in transforming both descriptive and geometric problems to algebraic representation. 10% of them responded wrong answers except only a problem. Four of them were interviewed individually to show their thinking and find the factor influencing on a positive elaboration. As results, we could find some characteristics of their thinking including the misconception that regard the problem finding a functional formula because there are the variables x and y in the problematic situation. In addition, we could find the their fixation which student have to set up the equation. Furthermore we could check that making student explain own algebraic representation was able to become the factor influencing on a positive elaboration. From these, we also discussed about several didactical implications.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.427-450
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• 2012

Using representations is essential for students to organize their thinking, to solve problems and to communicate each other. Students express information or situations suggested by problems easily and organize and infer them systematically using representations. Also, teachers are able to comprehend students' levels of understanding and thinking process better through them, and influence their representations. This study was conducted to understand mathematical representations of students uprightly and to seek implications for proper teaching of representations, by analyzing representations of students in mathematical problem solving process and the transformation process of representation via interactions.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.519-536
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• 2018

This study is intended to develop a numeracy program for late-adult learners. For this study, firstly, characteristics of numeracy were analyzed and based on those characteristics, numeracy learning contents for late-adult learners were selected. Also, teaching and learning materials were developed by linking the mathematics contents selected to experience-based real lives of late-adult learners. When this numeracy program was applied to late-adult learners, it was observed that there was a change in the affective domain like interest at the early stage of learning and that as learning continued, mathematical elaboration occurred by way of mathematical formalization. In conclusion, this study has significance by re-defining arithmetic for late-adults from a perspective of numeracy, based on experience of late-adults, and making a contribution to mathematical elaboration of late-adult learners so non-formal problem-solving processes of lat-adult learners can be justified as elaborate mathematical problem-solving.

• School Mathematics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.189-208
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to capture and explain the roles that signs and attention play in the fraction learning process, through a previous study that employs Deleuze's perspective on sign and the role of attention. From this case study of elementary school students, we found that signs are a prerequisite for learning and that learning takes place as different forms of attention shifts. The various types of semiotic resources used by teachers and students have been found to play an important role in coordinating collective attention between teachers and students.