• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.181-199
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• 2011

The area formula for a plane figure represents the relations between the area and the lengths which determine the area of the figure. Students are supposed to understand the relations in it as well as to be able to find the area of a figure using the formula. This study investigates how 5th grade students understand the formulas for the area of triangle, rectangle and parallelogram, focusing on their understanding of functional relations in the formulas. The results show that students have insufficient understanding of the relations in the area formula, especially in the formula for the area of a triangle. Solving the problems assigned to them, students developed three types of strategies: Substituting numbers in the area formula, drawing and transforming figures, reasoning based on the relations between the variables in the formula. Substituting numbers in the formula and drawing and transforming figures were the preferred strategies of students. Only a few students tried to solve the problems by reasoning based on the relations between the variables in the formula. Only a few students were able to aware of the proportional relations between the area and the base, or the area and the height and no one was aware of the inverse relation between the base and the height.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.305-322
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• 2010

The epistemological obstacles in the area learning of plane figure can be categorized into two types that is closely related to an attribute of measurement and is strongly connected with unit square. First, reasons for the obstacle related to an attribute of measurement are that 'area' is in conflict. with 'length' and the definition of 'plane figure' is not accordance with that of 'measurement'. Second, the causes of epistemological obstacles related to unit square are that unit square is not a basic unit to students and students have little understanding of the conception of the two dimensions. Thus, To overcome the obstacle related to an attribute of measurement, students must be able to distinguish between 'area' and 'length' through a variety of measurement activities. And, the definition of area needs to be redefined with the conception of measurement. Also, the textbook should make it possible to help students to induce the formula with the conception of 'array' and facilitate the application of formula in an integrated way. Meanwhile, To overcome obstacles related to unit square, authentic subject matter of real life and the various shapes of area need to be introduced in order for students to practice sufficient activities of each measure stage. Furthermore, teachers should seek for the pedagogical ways such as concrete manipulable activities to help them to grasp the continuous feature of the conception of area. Finally, it must be study on epistemological obstacles for good understanding. As present the cause and the teaching implication of epistemological obstacles through the research of epistemological obstacles, it must be solved.

• School Mathematics
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.19-37
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• 2014

This study investigated the degree of understanding pre-service teachers' random variable concept, based on the attention and the importance for developing pre-service teachers' ability on statistical reasoning in statistics education. To accomplish this, the subject of this study was 70 pre-service teachers belonged to three universities respectively. The teachers were given to 7 tasks on random variable and requested to solve them in 40 minutes. The tasks consisted of three contents in large; 1) one was on the definition of random variables, 2) the other was on the understanding of random variables in different/diverse conditions, and 3) another was on problem solving relevant to random variable concept. The findings are as follows. First, while 20% of pre-service teachers understood the definition of random variable correctly, most teachers could not distinguish between random variable and variable or probability. Second, there was a significant difference in understanding random variables in different/diverse conditions. Namely, the degree of understanding on the continuous random variable was superior to that of discrete random variable and also the degree of understanding on the equal distribution was superior to that of unequality distribution. Third, three types of problems relevant to random variable concept dealt with in this study were finding a sample space and an elementary event, and finding a probability value. In result, the teachers responded to the problem on finding a probability value most correctly and on the contrary to this, they had the mot difficulty in solving the problem on finding a sample space.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.103-121
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• 2008

The primary purpose of this study was to gather knowledge about $5^{th},\;6^{th},\;and\;7^{th}$ graders' proportional reasoning ability by investigating their reactions and use of strategies when encounting proportional or nonproportional problems, and then to raise issues concerning instructional methods related to proportion. A descriptive study through pencil-and-paper tests was conducted. The tests consisted of 12 questions, which included 8 proportional questions and 4 nonproportional questions. The following conclusions were drawn from the results obtained in this study. First, for a deeper understanding of the ratio, textbooks should treat numerical comparison problems and qualitative prediction and comparison problems together with missing-value problems. Second, when solving missing-value problems, students correctly answered direct-proportion questions but failed to correctly answer inverse-proportion questions. This result highlights the need for a more intensive curriculum to handle inverse-proportion. In particular, students need to experience inverse-relationships more often. Third, qualitative reasoning tends to be a more general norm than quantitative reasoning. Moreover, the former could be the cornerstone of proportional reasoning, and for this reason, qualitative reasoning should be emphasized before proportional reasoning. Forth, when dealing with nonproportional problems about 34% of students made proportional errors because they focused on numerical structure instead of comprehending the overall relationship. In order to overcome such errors, qualitative reasoning should be emphasized. Before solving proportional problems, students must be enriched by experiences that include dealing with direct and inverse proportion problems as well as nonproportional situational problems. This will result in the ability to accurately recognize a proportional situation.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.239-248
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to analyze the educational effect of learning mentoring conducted by EBS for elementary and middle school students, the changes in self-directed learning skills, emotional stability and learning effect were analyzed for 425 students who participated in the EBS learning mentoring. As a result, There was no statistically significant difference in the educational effect according to the mentoring service period, method, and frequency, and there was a statistically significant difference in self-directed learning ability according to the mentoring time. As a result of analyzing the effect of the perception of the mentor on the educational effect, the more positive the mentor and the more positive the mentor role, the higher the self-directed learning ability and emotional stability. As for the learning effect, mentoring satisfaction had the greatest influence on the learning effect of Korean, English, and mathematics. The mentor role was affecting the Korean language and mathematics. Therefore, in order to reduce the learning gap of underprivileged students in the distance learning situation, the EBS learning mentoring project should be continuously promoted, and the mentoring period and the number of students and teachers participating in mentoring should be significantly increased.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.553-571
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• 2015

Mathematical, verbal, and spatial abilities are known as three important indicators for the success in the STEM disciplines. In this study, Purdue Spatial Visualization Test-Rotation, College Entrance Scholastic Aptitude Test- Math and Verbal score of engineering freshmen students have been used to find the relationships among these areas. In addition, gender differences in spatial visualization, verbal achievement and mathematical achievement have been investigated, too. In this research, I found that gender difference was highest in spatial visualization ability, followed by verbal achievement and smallest in mathematical achievement. Substantial number of male students possess high level of spatial abilities, but only half of female students were at the same level where their male colleagues were. The correlation between spatial ability and mathematical ability was negligible, contrary to former researches on elementary and middle school students. But the correlation was stronger for female students than male students. The correlation between mathematical achievement and verbal achievement was negative. It reflects the fact that when one section of SAT score is low, score of other sections should be higher to get admitted to college. Gender difference in mathematics was smallest for high achieving spatial ability group. For low spatial ability group gender difference in mathematics achievement has been observed, too. To find the combined contribution of spatial and verbal abilities to mathematics achievement, students were divided into 4 ability groups. Mathematics achievement decreased in the order of (1) high spatial -low verbal group, (2) low spatial - low verbal group, (3) high spatial - high verbal group, (4) low spatial - high verbal group.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.708-717
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• 2013

The new paradigm of the 21st Century science education explores a wide range of possibilities that can foster students' interest toward science and creative convergence thinking. In this study, through the analysis of programs that were developed in 'STEAM leader school' and 'STEAM teacher association for research' supported by the 'Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology,' we analyzed the linking frequency with each of STEAM education's fields and teachers' perception for the convergence strategy of technology and engineering. The results of this study show that linking frequency of technology and engineering is lower than the field of arts and mathematics in elementary school, but higher in middle and high school. 'Introduction technology contents in lives' in technology and 'crafts activity' in engineering are the most used teaching and learning strategy in STEAM education. But, although 'crafts activity' is engineering's major way of learning, many teachers understand and use it as a technological teaching learning strategy. It is important to understand that each of STEAM education's field has a unique nature and educational implications, for the effective settlement of STEAM education, we need to consider teaching and learning strategy in various way.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.123-130
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• 2012

As a sequel of "special improvement act for gifted student education" legislated on January 2000, "regulation act for gifted student education" was published on April 2002 which is the time Korea has settled down its education for the gifted. Announced in the December 2007 "general plan for development of gifted student education" provided a platform for the gifted student education in Korea of growth in quantity, in which a plan of providing gifted student education up to 1 percent of the elementary and middle school level students (approximately 70 thousands) has been established while the education currently provides to 0.59 percent (40 thousands) of all students. Until recently, however, education for gifted students has been performed based on the way of concentrating on academic domains. and it has put more weights on mathematics and english domains. In order to overcome this drawbacks, there have been various attempts for growth in quality of education for gifted students, one of them is the our proposal of convergence of science and art education for cultivating 21 century creative humans through establishment of new type of institution. In this paper, education curriculum and management strategies appliable to the proposed convergence education institutions for gifted students. For this purpose we derived the implication points through analysis on education processes used in korea science school for the gifted students, a representative institution for the gifted students in Korea, and we suggested educational process curriculums for the science and art institute for gifted students along with the detailed contents of convergence subject which is an essential subject to the institute.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.433-441
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• 2007

Creativity has very important significance to children. Although active researches and educations on other studies (for instance, mathematics, science, logics, music, etc) are being done, evaluation or development on children's creativity in design is very inadequate. Therefore, this study is a basic research to develop evaluation to judge design creativity of children as an incipient stage of educational method development to develop children's creativity in design. Evaluation categories (originality - novelty/fun, practicality-function/possibility) that can evaluate design creativity of children were drawn out based on documentary records, and as the results or performing experimental research to figure out correlativity between creativity of idea and design creativity targeting children in second grade of elementary school, subordinate provinces of idea's creativity related to design creativity were fluency and elaboration. However, it does not mean that fluency and delicacy are the only subordinate provinces of idea's creativity related to design creativity, but they are more influential compared to other provinces (creativity, abstractness of title, and resistance to premature closure) This study is to prepare basic framework of educational method to improve design creativity education of children, and has its meaning to complement what are lacked in design creativity through the educational method.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.251-266
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• 2013

With elementary school students who have learned the primary concepts of the four arithmetic operations as its subjects, this study has investigated in depth how schema and transformed schema are composed by recognition of the correct concepts and connection of concepts, that is to say, what schema learners form along with transformed schema with the primary concepts of the four arithmetic operations to understand the secondary concepts when power and mixed calculations are taken into contents. It has also investigated how the subjects use the schema they have formed for themselves and the transformed schema to approach problem solving, and how their composition of concepts and schema in problem solving ability achieve transformations. As a result, we can tell that the recognition of precise primary concepts and transformed schema work as important factors in the development from the primary to the secondary concepts. Here, we can also see learn that the formation of the schema created due to the connection among the primary concepts and the recognition of them and of the transformed schema play more important roles in the development toward the secondary concepts and the solution of arithmetic problems than any other factors.