• School Mathematics
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.633-650
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• 2013

The aim of this paper is to explore and understand, using in-depth interviews, the participant's interests and discourse analytic expressions in studying the notion of infinity and limit. In addition we tried to understand how the participant's ways of dealing with math and thinking patterns on the polygons whose boundary is infinite but area is finite as they brought up such examples. Further follow-up questions are posed on the infinite sum of a smallest number close to 0 and the sum of infinite sets of different smallest numbers close to 0. Larger aspects of two pre-service teachers' subjective thinking patterns and colloquial discourses were sketched by contrasting the three posed tasks. Cross case discussions are provided with several suggestions for the future research directions.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.235-257
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• 2010

Contemporary belief is that the creative talented can create new knowledge and lead national development, so lots of countries in the world have interest in Gifted Education. As we well know, U.S.A., England, Russia, Germany, Australia, Israel, and Singapore enforce related laws in Gifted Education to offer Gifted Classes, and our government has also created an Improvement Act in January, 2000 and Enforcement Ordinance for Gifted Improvement Act was also announced in April, 2002. Through this initiation Gifted Education can be possible. Enforcement Ordinance was revised in October, 2008. The main purpose of this revision was to expand the opportunity of Gifted Education to students with special education needs. One of these programs is, the opportunity of Gifted Education to be offered to lots of the Gifted by establishing Special Classes at each school. Also, it is important that the quality of Gifted Education should be combined with the expansion of opportunity for the Gifted. Social opinion is that it will be reckless only to expand the opportunity for the Gifted Education, therefore, assessment on the Teaching and Learning Program for the Gifted is indispensible. In this study, 3 middle schools were selected for the Teaching and Learning Programs in mathematics. Each 1st Grade was reviewed and analyzed through comparative tables between Regular and Gifted Education Programs. Also reviewed was the content of what should be taught, and programs were evaluated on assessment standards which were revised and modified from the present teaching and learning programs in mathematics. Below, research issues were set up to assess the formation of content areas and appropriateness for Teaching and Learning Programs for the Gifted in mathematics. A. Is the formation of special class content areas complying with the 7th national curriculum? 1. Which content areas of regular curriculum is applied in this program? 2. Among Enrichment and Selection in Curriculum for the Gifted, which one is applied in this programs? 3. Are the content areas organized and performed properly? B. Are the Programs for the Gifted appropriate? 1. Are the Educational goals of the Programs aligned with that of Gifted Education in mathematics? 2. Does the content of each program reflect characteristics of mathematical Gifted students and express their mathematical talents? 3. Are Teaching and Learning models and methods diverse enough to express their talents? 4. Can the assessment on each program reflect the Learning goals and content, and enhance Gifted students' thinking ability? The conclusions are as follows: First, the best contents to be taught to the mathematical Gifted were found to be the Numeration, Arithmetic, Geometry, Measurement, Probability, Statistics, Letter and Expression. Also, Enrichment area and Selection area within the curriculum for the Gifted were offered in many ways so that their Giftedness could be fully enhanced. Second, the educational goals of Teaching and Learning Programs for the mathematical Gifted students were in accordance with the directions of mathematical education and philosophy. Also, it reflected that their research ability was successful in reaching the educational goals of improving creativity, thinking ability, problem-solving ability, all of which are required in the set curriculum. In order to accomplish the goals, visualization, symbolization, phasing and exploring strategies were used effectively. Many different of lecturing types, cooperative learning, discovery learning were applied to accomplish the Teaching and Learning model goals. For Teaching and Learning activities, various strategies and models were used to express the students' talents. These activities included experiments, exploration, application, estimation, guess, discussion (conjecture and refutation) reconsideration and so on. There were no mention to the students about evaluation and paper exams. While the program activities were being performed, educational goals and assessment methods were reflected, that is, products, performance assessment, and portfolio were mainly used rather than just paper assessment.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.403-420
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• 2016

Some of the critical changes in the revised 2015 Korean Mathematics curriculum were that direct proportion and inverse proportion were moved from elementary school to middle school and that supplementary content related to correlation was included. These decisions were based on comparative studies of international curriculum. Therefore in this study, we selected countries for comparison; United States, England, France, Finland, Australia, Japan, Singapore, China and Taiwan. We looked into the timing and scope for direct/inverse proportion and correlation in curricula of these countries. Along with this, we established four criteria; vertical sequence, horizontal sequence, external connection, and internal connection for an analysis framework. Then we compared and analysed the direct/inverse proportion and correlation in each curriculum. As a result, in most of these curricula, the direct/inverse proportions are introduced at middle school or are introduced at elementary school and then developed further at middle school. Most of curriculums on direct/inverse proportion and correlation match the four criteria. Correlation is introduced in high school mathematics in all counties except Finland and it is dealt in diverse context introducing related concepts, for example, correlation coefficient, regression straight line, and least square. We suggested that it is necessary to refer these international trends for the next revision of curriculum.

• The Journal of Korean Association of Computer Education
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.105-114
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• 2001

This paper illustrates a calculus module which generates step-by-step solutions using J/Link that connects Java and Mathematica. Such a module provides intermediate and low level students with a practical environment where they can easily follow the solution paths on their own paces. The extra feature of this module depicts graphical images for a given function and its differentiated result to enhance the visual understandings of calculus concepts. Mathematica as a mathematical expert system that provides systematic mathematical knowledge to students with step-by-step solutions will be possibly extended to the tutorial or CMI development. The proposed module is implemented in a Java servlet that links to Mathematica FrontEnd. This approach results in adopting font systems to express two dimensional mathematical expressions in web documents as an alternative typesetting tool.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.223-240
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• 2015

This paper deals with how to design and develop white-box based e-learning contents which are equipped with conceptual understanding and step-by-step computational procedures for studying vector calculus for science-engineering majors who might need supplementary mathematics learning. Noting that rewriting rules are often used in school mathematics for students' problem solving, the theoretical aspects of rewriting rules are reviewed for developing supplementary e-learning contents for them. The software design of step-by-step problem solving requires careful arrangement of rewriting rules and pattern matching techniques for white-box procedures using a computer algebra system such as Mathematica. Several modules for step-by-step problem solving as well as producing dynamic display of e-learning contents was coded by Mathematica in order to find the length of a curve in vector calculus after implementing several rules for differentiation and integration. The developed contents are equipped with diagnostic modules and immediate feedback for supplementary learning in terms of a tutorial. At the end, this paper indicates the strengths and features of the developed contents for college students who need to increase math learning capabilities, and suggests future research directions.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.81-108
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• 2012

One of the keyword in every nation's recent educational policy is key competencies. Considering national competitiveness originating from educational competitiveness, educational policy has been driven to identify key competencies and realize them through school education. Within this context some countries have developed competencies-based curriculum and discussed ways to relate key competencies and subject matter areas. However, there have been few researches on how to reflect or integrate key competencies into subject matter areas. Because of this reason, the ways to incorporate and integrate key competencies into three subject areas including mathematics were investigated. The recent trends of curriculum, teaching and learning, and assessment of domestic and foreign cases were explored by the subject of one Korean international middle school, one British foreign school in Seoul, one French foreign school in Seoul, and four middle schools in New Zealand. To establish competencies-based school education, there should be intimate connection system among curriculum, teaching and learning, assessment, and teacher education. Through analysis of domestic and foreign cases, some conclusions regarding how these aspects have changed with the emphasis of key competencies were drawn. In this paper, through classroom observation and teacher interview, a case of the competencies-based mathematics lessons of one French foreign school was investigated. As a result, summaries and recommendations related to ways to improve subject teaching and teacher education in light of key competencies were presented. In these recommendations, the ways to reconstruct subject-based curriculum, the content-specific teaching and learning, and educational assessment were included.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.117-136
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• 2012

The goal of this study is to investigate a didactic transposition method of text books and high school students' understanding for the Normal Distribution. To accomplish this goal, framework descriptors were developed to analyse the didactic transposition method and interpret the students' understanding based on the Historico-Genetic process of the Normal Distribution, the meaning of the Normal Distribution as a scholarly knowledge and the results of previous studies on students' understanding for the Normal Distribution. This study presented several recommendations for instruction of the Normal Distribution according to the results of analysing the didactic transposition method and interpreting the students' understanding in terms of the developed framework.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.215-238
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• 2012

One of the keyword in every nation's recent educational policy is key competencies. Considering national competitiveness originating from educational competitiveness, educational policy has been driven to identify key competencies and realize them through school education. Within this context some leading countries have developed competencies-based curriculum and discussed ways to relate key competencies and subject matter areas. However, there have been few researches on how to reflect or integrate key competencies into subject matter areas. Because of this reason, the ways to incorporate and integrate key competencies into three subject areas including mathematics were investigated. The recent trends of curriculum, teaching and learning, and assessment of domestic and foreign cases were explored by the subject of one Korean international middle school, one British foreign school in Seoul, one French foreign school in Seoul, and four middle schools in New Zealand. To establish competencies-based school education, there should be intimate connection system among curriculum, teaching and learning, assessment, and teacher education. Through analysis of domestic and foreign cases, some conclusions regarding how these aspects have changed with the emphasis of key competencies were drawn. In this paper, through classroom observations and teacher interviews, the reality of competencies-based mathematics teaching of New Zealand and France was investigated. As a result, summaries and recommendations related to ways to improve subject teaching and teacher education in light of key competencies were presented. In these recommendations, the ways to reconstruct subject-based curriculum, the content-specific teaching and learning, and educational assessment were included.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.509-523
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• 2005

This study empirically examines motivations of entering college of education and academic problems that pre-service teachers encounter under the curricular activities. We analyze the phenomena of professional development under the four categories: motivation toward entering college of education, pedagogical content knowledge, subject matter knowledge and future vision. We conducted survey for the S university students first and interviewed 3 selected participants. Almost 50 students from college of education participated answering to the surveys. Using SPSS package, there was no significant difference between freshmen, sophomore and junior students in any category Male students responded more positively than female students in all the categories. To explore survey results deeply, we selected 3 students from sophomore and junior levels and 2 extra senior students to conduct interviews. The interpretation of the data described how their academic problems unfold partly because they seek another major and how their professional development take place carrying out practicum activities. Most of the interviewees felt that their academic lives were affected motivations of entering college of education and difficulties of studying subject matter knowledge. At the end, several suggestions are added for future research.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.179-193
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• 2006

The aim of this paper is to explore and understand, using in-depth interviews, the participant's enthusiasm for and involvement in studying mathematics and the deeper nature of his/her interest in mathematics teaching. In addition a larger aim is to understand how the individual's interest in mathematics and teaching are linked to his/her larger personal fulfillment. We conducted in-depth interviews with 4 pre-service teachers' subjective experiences focusing on deep motivation, pedagogical content knowledge, inner vision. Interviews focus much more on the participant's spontaneous feeling, consciousness, and state as these arise in the interview, and on past foiling, consciousness and state as they appear to the participant subjectively retrospectively in his/her memory. The output of this research consists of 2 portraits out of 4 individual participants, highlighting and conceptually developing the specific aspects under study; different ways in which individuals' involvement with the subject area affects their motivation, inner visions and academic efforts toward becoming teachers. Larger aspects of pre-service teachers' subjective experiences were sketched by contrasting the two cases. Several suggestions were put at the end to enhance mathematics education concerning curriculum development.