• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.69-79
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to analyze 3rd, 4th and 5th graders' probability understanding and raise issues concerning instructional methods and search for the possibility of learning probability. For the purpose, a descriptive study through pencil-and-paper test regarding fairness, sample space, probability of event, probability comparison, independence and conditional probability was conducted. The following conclusions were drawn from the results obtained in this study. First, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students scored the highest in the sample space questions. In descending order of skill, the students scored the highest in sample space following probability of events, fairness and probability comparison. Second, however, the level of independence understanding was low. There was no meaningful differences between grades and the conditional probability was the least understood. The independence is difficult to develop naturally according to cognitive development. The conditional probability recognizing the probability of an event changes in non-replacement situations was very difficult for these students. Third, there were significant differences between the 5th graders and the 3rd and 4th graders in the probability comparison questions. It shows that 5th graders understand the concept of proportion when they compare equal ratio probability of an event. The 3rd graers could do different ratio probability of an event more easily than equal ratio probability of an event after they were instructed on probability comparison.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.503-525
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• 2012

This study compared levels of mathematically talented students' statistical thinking with those of non-talented students in statistical modeling and sampling distribution understanding. t tests were conducted to test for statistically significant differences between mathematically gifted students and non-gifted students. In case of statistical modeling, for both of elementary and middle school graders, the t tests show that there is a statistically significant difference between mathematically gifted students and non-gifted students. Table of frequencies of each level, however, shows that levels of mathematically gifted students' thinking were not distributed at the high levels but were overlapped with those of non-gifted students. A similar tendency is also present in sampling distribution understanding. These results are thought-provoking results in statistics instruction for mathematically talented students.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.451-469
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• 2012

This research intends to examine how 6th graders (age 12) conceptualize the area of geometric figures. In this research, 4 problems were given to 122 students, which the 4 problems correspond to understanding area concept, finding the area of geometric figures-including rectangular, parallelogram, and triangle, writing the area formula for finding area of geometric figures, and explaining the reason why the area formula holds. As the results of the study, we identified that students revealed the most low achievement in the understanding area concept, and lower achievement in explaining the reason why the area formula holds, writing the area formula, finding the area of geometric figures in order. In based on the results, we suggested the didactical implication for improving the students' conception about the area of geometric figures.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.697-715
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to investigate the overall understanding of patterns by second- and third-grade elementary school students. For this purpose, 12 classes per grade were selected from 10 schools, and a 46-item test was administered to 216 second graders and 223 third graders. The results of the study showed that in most cases, there was no statistically significant difference in the understanding of patterns between second- and third-graders. The exception occurred regarding the 10 items of identifying the structure of a pattern: Second-graders did better than third-graders regarding 8 items, whereas vice versa regarding 2 items. The items that both second- and third-graders struggled with included finding multiple components of a given pattern, comparing the structures between patterns, and guessing a particular term in an open pattern. Based on these findings, this paper discusses second- and third-graders' understanding of patterns and suggestions for further instruction.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.898-909
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• 2009

In this study, we investigated the influences of the role-playing analogy in chemistry concept learning on mapping understanding and mapping errors by analogical reasoning ability level. Seventh-graders (N=151) at a middle school were assigned to the comparison group and the experimental group. The students of the experimental group were taught with the 'running in the circle' role-playing analogy. After the students were taught about 'the relation between volume and pressure of gas', the test of mapping understanding in the next class and the retention test four weeks later were administered. The students with typical mapping errors were also interviewed to investigate their mapping processes. The results revealed that the role-playing analogy in chemistry concept learning improved mapping understanding and its retention regardless of analogical reasoning ability level. It was also found that the students in the experimental group had fewer mapping errors than those in the comparison group. However, there were similar patterns of mapping errors in both groups, and there were no significant differences in the frequencies of each type of mapping errors by analogical reasoning ability level. Educational implication of these findings are discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.spc5
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• pp.476-484
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to examine the misconception profiles of the scientifically-gifted and non-gifted children in terms of basic physics concepts and to compare them in terms of the types of differences in misconception as well as in their understanding of the concepts themselves. The subjects of this study were 75 scientifically-gifted children attending the Educational Center of Gifted Children in DNUE and 148 non-gifted children in elementary schools in Daegu city. For the purposes of this study, the basic concepts of physics (heat, electromagnetism, force, and light) which should be learned in an elementary school were selected with a review of related previous research and with an analysis of the 7th science curriculum. Next, a questionnaire was made which was made up of 20 multiple choice statement based items. Analysis of the results of the statement sections in the test, it was hoped, would reveal the difference between the scientifically-gifted and the non-gifted children's understanding, while the responses in the multiple choice items would suggest the differences between the two groups in terms of the misconceptions regarding physics concepts. The results of this study are as follows: First, although both the gifted and non-gifted children showed a low level of understanding of the concepts of heat, electromagnetism, force, and light, the gifted children' level of understanding of those physics concepts was proved to be significantly higher than the non-gifted, so it seems that the scientifically-gifted children have fundamentally understood the concepts in physics and have a higher level of understanding of them. Additionally, both the scientifically-gifted and non-gifted children' level of understanding of all the concepts was lower in the order of electromagnetism, heat, force, and light. This shows that both the scientifically-gifted and the non-gifted children have no difference in the level of understanding of any specific physics concept, but have similar levels of difficulty in every concept. Second, both the scientifically-gifted and non-gifted children showed similar types of misconceptions. However, the scientifically-gifted children had fewer misconceptions than the non-gifted. We suggest that scientifically-gifted children's misconceptions were not fixed yet, so there remained a possibility of them being corrected easily with appropriate instruction.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.39-48
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• 2017

In this study, we investigated the characteristics of analogs generated by high school students to explain ionic bonding in the perspectives of the number of analogs, the understanding of mapping, and the source and type of analogs. We also compared the results by students' conceptual understanding, logical thinking ability, and analogical reasoning ability. Participants in this study were 395 11th graders in Seoul. The results of the study showed that the higher the conceptual understanding, the logical thinking ability, and the analogical reasoning ability, the more the students generated the analogs. The understanding of mapping was related to logical thinking ability and analogical reasoning ability. It is noteworthy that the sources of analogs differed only depending on their conceptual understanding of the target concept among the cognitive variables studied. Students who had higher conceptual understanding also generated analogs from more diverse sources. Some types of the generated analogs were related to the cognitive variables. For examples, the students who had higher conceptual understanding and logical thinking ability generated more verbal/pictorial analogs. The types of analogs were not related to cognitive variables in terms of artificiality, abstraction, and systemicity. Educational implications of these findings were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.718-734
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• 2013

The purpose of the study is to investigate high school students' perception and understanding of old metaphorical science terminologies and new metaphorical science terminologies (highly metaphorical science terminologies). For the study, three old metaphorical terminologies and three new metaphorical terminologies have been chosen from the old and new Korean science curricula respectively, and 176 high school students who learned physics based on 7th science curriculum developed in 1997 and 175 highschool students who learned physics based on the science curriculum revised in 2009 were sampled from two high schools in a big city in Korea. The research results are as follows: First, for the old metaphorical terminologies, there are more students who give explanations using scientific terms than those who use the meaning of the metaphors that terminologies had. Second, for the new metaphorical terminologies, there are much less students who give explanations using scientific terms than those who explained using the meaning of the metaphors that the terminologies had. Therefore, it should be emphasized that, for the new metaphorical terminologies, the metaphorical meaning of the terminologies do not mean the concepts themselves in teaching science.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.61 no.1
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• pp.109-126
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to explore how well teachers anticipate students to understand and solve equations. For this purpose, a questionnaire of the equal sign was developed, and 20 fourth-grade classes were selected as research participants. Teachers in each class were asked to predict various strategies on how their own students would respond to the questionnaire, and a total of 450 students from the 20 classes solved the questionnaire. As a result of the analysis, the teachers could predict students' computational strategies and relational strategies easily but did not fully understand that some students used both strategies or employed incorrect computational or relational strategies. The students tended to use relational strategies better than the teachers expected. They also employed operational strategies more often than the teachers expected. The teachers predicted that students' strategies would be influenced by the types of the problems such as equation-structure items and equation-solving items, whereas the students were more influenced by the forms of equations in the problems. Based on these results, several implications for the knowledge to which teachers needed to attend were discussed so that elementary school students could enhance the relational understanding of the equal sign.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.753-762
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• 1998

This Paper reports results of investigating the relationship between students' perfoonance and mathematics imtructiooal system in understanding of the function concept. A written examination measuring calcullli students' understanding of the fimction concept was administered to two groups of students whose educatiooal oockground were different. One group consists of students who completed a pre-calculus course in Korea and the other group completed the same course in the United States. This study investigates how students in two groups acquire an understanding of major aspects of the function concept and provided interesting insights regarding the different background and belief related to their performance. Follow-up interviews were conducted to identify possible explanations for the different performance of the two groups in understanding the function concepts. Results indicate that the differences came from the educational environment and individual belief.