• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.345-366
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• 2006

In this study, we investigated the methods of using the Cabri3D program for education of problem solving in school mathematics. Cabri3D is the program that can represent 3-dimensional figures and explore these in dynamic method. By using this program, we can see mathematical relations in space or mathematical properties in 3-dimensional figures vidually. We conducted classroom activity exploring Cabri3D with 15 pre-service leachers in 2006. In this process, we collected practical examples that can assist four stages of problem solving. Through the analysis of these examples, we concluded that Cabri3D is useful instrument to enhance problem solving ability and suggested it's educational usage as follows. In the stage of understanding the problem, it can be used to serve visual understanding and intuitive belief on the meaning of the problem, mathematical relations or properties in 3-dimensional figures. In the stage of devising a plan, it can be used to extend students's 2-dimensional thinking to 3-dimensional thinking by analogy. In the stage of carrying out the plan, it can be used to help the process to lead deductive thinking. In the stage of looking back at the work, it can be used to assist the process applying present work's result or method to another problem, checking the work, new problem posing.

• School Mathematics
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.331-355
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• 2012

All the method used in teaching the ellipse was to have students draw the points which have the same sum of distances from the two points so that they can confirm the shapes of the ellipse before showing them the definition of ellipse. In this process, students would not get an opportunity to think or make the definition of ellipse for themselves. This deductive way can hinder students from having clear understanding of why such definition was made. This paper introduces a method of defining the ellipse based on the similarity between a circle and an ellipse, leading into the equation. This method is possible by introducing Analytic Geometry taught in current school mathematics and Transformation Geometry. By doing so, this paper will discuss a fundamental understanding about the ellipse and the feature of the ellipse expandable by intuition. Furthermore this paper will also show various advantages which can be given by defining the ellipse in Transformation Geometry.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.183-207
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• 2024

This study is a case study that considered fractional senses and fraction operation abilities for 107 gifted students in elementary school classes. In order to find out the fractional sense, in the first question comparing the sizes of fractions 2/3 and 4/5, the students showed a variety of strategies, but the utilization rate of strategies excluding reduction to a common denominator did not exceed 50%. The second question can be solved by using the first question. It is a problem of finding two fractions by selecting four from six numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 to create two fractions of which sum does not exceed 1. The percentage of correct answers to this question was about 27% (29 out of 107). Only 5 out of 29 students found answers using the first question, and the rest of the students sought answers through trial and error in various calculations. It shows that the item arrangement method from a deductive perspective has no significant effect on elementary school students. The percentage of correct answers was about 27% in the questions to find out the fraction operation ability-the question of drawing a 4/3 bar using a given 3/8-sized bar and 30.7% (23 out of 75) of the students who had wrong answers showed insufficient splitting operation. In addition, it has been shown that the operation of partitioning and iterating to form numerical senses and fractional concepts related to the fractions of the students has no significant impact.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.161-178
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• 2016

Mathematics problem based learning(PBL), which has recently attracted much attention, is a teaching and learning method to increase mathematical ability and help learning mathematical concepts and principles through problem solving using students' mathematical prerequisite knowledge. In spite of such a quite attention, it is not easy to apply and practice PBL actually in school mathematics. Furthermore, the recent instructional situations or environments has focused on student's self construction of their learning and its process. Because of this reason, to whom is related to mathematics education including math teachers, investigation and recognition on the degree of students' acquisition of mathematical thinking skills and strategies(for example, inductive and deductive thinking, critical thinking, creative thinking) is an very important work. Thus, developing mathematical thinking skills is one of the most important goals of school mathematics. In particular, recently, connection or integration of one subject and the other subject in school is emphasized, and then mathematics might be one of the most important subjects to have a significant role to connect or integrate with other subjects. While considering the reason is that the ultimate goal of mathematics education is to pursue an enhancement of mathematical thinking ability through the enhancement of problem solving ability, this study aimed to implement basically what is the meaning of the integrated thinking ability in problem based learning theory in Mathematics. In addition, using historical materials, this study was to develop mathematical materials and a sample of a concrete instructional guideline for enhancing integrated thinking ability in problem based learning program.

• School Mathematics
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.379-396
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to analyze characteristics of problem solving in mathematics for gifted students through case study on solving the mathematical problem for gifted students, and to investigate what are relationships with the cognitive and affective characteristics. To this end, this study was to analyze the characteristics on the problem solving in mathematics by using qualitative research method after it selected two students who had specific education for brilliant students. As a result, this study has shown that it had high preference for question with clear answer, high preference for individual inquiry learning, high adhesion to answer for question, and high adhesion for assignment on characteristics of process of problem solving, but there was much difference in spirit of competition. As to the characteristics of thoughts in problem solving, this study has shown that it had high grasp capacity, intuitive insight, and capacity for visualization, but there were differences in capacity for generalization and adaptability. However, both two students had low values in deductive thought. In addition, as to the home environment and cognitive and affective characteristics, they were not related to the characteristics on problem solving directly, but it has shown that it affected each other indirectly. As to the conclusion of this study, this researcher thinks that it will be valuable documentation in order to improve curriculum, development of textbooks, and teaching method for special education for the gifted students and education for secondary mathematics.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.85-99
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• 2003

In this paper, firstly examined various proofs types that cover informal empirical justifications by Balacheff, Miyazaki, and Harel ＆ Sowder and Tall. Using these theoretical frameworks, justification activities by 5th graders were analyzed and several conclusions were drawn as follow: 1) Children in 5th grade could justify using various proofs types and method ranged from external proofs schemes by Harel & Sowder to thought experiment by Balacheff This implies that children in elementary school can justify various mathematical statements of ideas for themselves. To improve children's proving abilities, rich experience for justifying should be provided. 2) Activities that make conjectures from cases then justify should be given to students in order to develop a sense of necessity of formal proof. 3) Children have to understand the meaning and usage of mathematical symbol to advance to formal deductive proofs. 4) New theoretical framework is needed to be established to provide a framework for research on elementary school children's justification activities. Research on proof mainly focused on the type of proof in terms of reasoning and activities involved. But proof types are also influenced by the tasks given. In elementary school, tasks that require physical activities or examples are provided. To develop students'various proof types, tasks that require various justification methods should be provided. 5) Children's justification type were influenced not only by development level but also by the concept they had. 6) Justification activities provide useful situation that assess students'mathematical understanding. 7) Teachers understanding toward role of proof(verification, explanation, communication, discovery, systematization) should be the starting point of proof activities.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.59-71
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• 1998

Recently, most classrooms in Korea are fully equipped with multimedia environments such as a powerful pentium pc, a 43″large sized TV, and so on through the third renovation of classroom environments. However, there is not much software teachers can use directly in their teaching. Even with existing software such as GSP, and Mathematica, it turns out that it doesn####t fit well in a large number of students in classrooms and with all written in English. The study is to analyze the characteristics of problem-solving process and to develop a computer program which integrates the instruction of problem solving into a regular math program in areas of quadratic functions and ellipses. Problem Solving in this study included two sessions: 1) Learning of basic facts, concepts, and principles; 2) problem solving with problem contexts. In the former, the program was constructed based on the definitions of concepts so that students can explore, conjecture, and discover such mathematical ideas as basic facts, concepts, and principles. In the latter, the Polya#s 4 phases of problem-solving process contributed to designing of the program. In understanding of a problem, the program enhanced students#### understanding with multiple, dynamic representations of the problem using visualization. The strategies used in making a plan were collecting data, using pictures, inductive, and deductive reasoning, and creative reasoning to develop abstract thinking. In carrying out the plan, students can solve the problem according to their strategies they planned in the previous phase. In looking back, the program is very useful to provide students an opportunity to reflect problem-solving process, generalize their solution and create a new in-depth problem. This program was well matched with the dynamic and oscillation Polya#s problem-solving process. Moreover, students can facilitate their motivation to solve a problem with dynamic, multiple representations of the problem and become a powerful problem solve with confidence within an interactive computer environment. As a follow-up study, it is recommended to research the effect of the program in classrooms.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.79-94
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to find out the characteristics of the types(levels) of justification which are appeared by elementary mathematically gifted students in solving the tasks of plane division and spatial division. Selecting 10 fifth or sixth graders from 3 different groups in terms of mathematical capability and letting them generalize and justify some patterns. This study analyzed their responses and identified their differences in justification strategy. This study shows that mathematically gifted students apply different types of justification, such as inductive, generic or formal justification. Upper and lower groups lie in the different justification types(levels). And mathematically gifted children, especially in the upper group, have the strong desire to justify the rules which they discover, requiring a deductive thinking by themselves. They try to think both deductively and logically, and consider this kind of thought very significant.

• School Mathematics
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.487-506
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• 2007

The aims of this study is figure out the characteristics of justification patterns and mathematical representation which are derived from 14 mathematically gifted middle school students in the process of solving the spatial tasks on Archimedean solid. This study shows that mathematically gifted students apply different types of justification such as empirical, or deductive justification and partial or whole justification. It would be necessary to pay attention to the value of informal justification, by comparing the response of student who understood the entire transformation process and provided a reasonable explanation considering all component factors although presenting informal justification and that of student who showed formalization process based on partial analysis. Visual representation plays an valuable role in finding out the Idea of solving the problem and grasping the entire structure of the problem. We found that gifted students tried to create elaborated symbols by consolidating mathematical concepts into symbolic re-presentations and modifying them while gradually developing symbolic representations. This study on justification patterns and mathematical representation of mathematically gifted students dealing with spatial geometry tasks provided an opportunity for understanding their the characteristics of spacial geometrical thinking and expending their thinking.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.299-314
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• 2008

The purposes of this study were to investigate what attitudes students have toward learning proofs and what difficulties they have in learning proofs, and to examine how the use of dynamic geometry software, the Geometer's Sketchpad, helps students' proof learning. The study involved 117 9th graders in 2 high schools. According to questionnaire data, over 50 percent of the total respondents(116) indicated negative attitudes toward learning proofs, on the other hand, only 16 percent of the total respondents indicated positive attitudes toward the learning. Memorizing and remembering many kinds of theorems, definitions, and postulates to use in proving statements was the most difficult part in learning proofs, which the largest proportion of the total respondents indicated. The study found that the use of the Geometer's Sketchpad played positive roles in developing students' understanding of proofs and stimulating students' interests in learning proofs.