• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.309-341
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• 2017

This study aims to investigate an approach to teach percentages in elementary mathematics class by analyzing calculating strategies with percentage the students use to solve the percentage tasks and their percentages of correct answers, as well as types of errors with percentages the students make. For this research 182 sixth graders were examined. The instrument test consists of various task types in reference to the previous study; the percentages tasks are divided into algebraic-geometric, part whole-comparison-change and find part-find whole-find percentage tasks. According to the analysis of this study, percentages of correct answers of students with percentage tasks were lower than we expected, approximately 50%. Comparing the percentages of correct answers according to the task types, the part-whole tasks are higher than the comparison and change tasks, the geometric tasks are approximately equal to the algebraic tasks, and the find percentage tasks are higher than the find whole and find part tasks. As to the strategies that students employed, the percentage of using the formal strategy is not much higher than that of using the informal strategy, even after learning the formal strategy. As an insightful approach for teaching percentages, based on the study results, it is suggested to reinforce the meaning of percentage, include various types of the comparison and change tasks, emphasize the informal strategy explicitly using models prior to the formal strategy, and understand the relations among part, whole and percentage throughly in various percentage situations before calculating.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.473-495
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• 2011

Across the secondary school, students deal with the algebraic conditions like as identity, inverse, commutative law, associative law and distributive law. The algebraic structures, group, ring and field, are determined by these algebraic conditions. But the conditioning of these algebraic structures are not mentioned at all, as well as the meaning of the algebraic structures. Thus, students is likely to be considered the algebraic conditions as productions from the number sets. In this study, we systematize didactically the meanings of algebraic conditions and algebraic structures, considering connections between the number systems and the solutions of the equation. Didactically systematizing is to construct the model for student's natural mental activity, that is, to construct the stream of experience through which students are considered mathematical concepts as productions from necessities and high probability. For this purpose, we develop the program for the gifted, which its objective is to teach the meanings of the number system and to grasp the algebraic structure conceptually that is guaranteed to solve equations. And we verify the effectiveness of this developed program using didactical experiment. Moreover, the program can be used in ordinary students by replacement the term 'algebraic structure' with the term such as identity, inverse, commutative law, associative law and distributive law, to teach their meaning.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.391-421
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• 2015

The scientific technology developed rapidly and the internet became more popular, also, the world became interactive with one another and the word 'Global' became popular and built a new paradigm. As the development of the society, the ideal criteria for the competent student changed. Consequently, the attention for the globalized education increased. From the points of view of mathematical education, it became a important task to be prepared for international competitiveness for korean talented students. For theses reasons, this article analyzes the characteristics of IBDP and its textbook, which is an international official curriculum and one of the actualizing method for internalization Korean high school curriculum and text book, specifically, focusing on algebra part. Especially, Korean curriculum textbooks and the Mathematical Higher Level textbooks of IBDP was compared and analyzed. As a result, the depth and range of the content, standard level of the question, methods being used to explain the concept, type of questions as well as teaching - learning method were analyzed and in each chapter of the algebra we give meaningful result and proposed discussion.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.301-318
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• 2017

This paper explores students' question generation process and their study in small group discussion. The research is based on Anthropological Theory of the Didactic developed by Chevallard. He argues that the savior (knowledge) we are dealing with at school is based on a paradigm that we prevail over whether we 'learn' or 'study' socially. In other words, we haven't provided students with autonomous research and learning opportunities under 'the dominant paradigm of visiting works'. As an alternative, he suggests that we should move on to a new didactic paradigm for 'questioning the world a question', and proposes the Study and Research Courses (SRC) as its pedagogical structure. This study explores the SRC structure of small group activities in solving ill-structured problems. In order to explore the SRC structure generated in the small group discussion, one middle school teacher and 7 middle school students participated in this study. The students were divided into two groups with 4 students and 3 students. The teacher conducted the lesson with ill-structured problems provided by researchers. We collected students' presentation materials and classroom video records, and then analyzed based on SRC structure. As a result, we have identified that students were able to focus on the valuable information they needed to explore. We found that the nature of the questions generated by students focused on details more than the whole of the problem. In the SRC course, we also found pattern of a small group discussion. In other words, they generated questions relatively personally, but sought answer cooperatively. This study identified the possibility of SRC as a tool to provide a holistic learning mode of small group discussions in small class, which bring about future mathematics classrooms. This study is meaningful to investigate how students develop their own mathematical inquiry process through self-directed learning, learner-specific curriculum are emphasized and the paradigm shift is required.

• School Mathematics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.179-199
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• 2013

In this study we grasp what contents in the mathematics curriculum the students of multicultural and North Korean migrant families are vulnerable to and we would like to provide the bases to devise the appropriate teaching and learning methods for them. In order to this work we used the results of 2011 National Assessment Educational Achievement. We categorized students from multicultural and North Korean migrant families into children from international marriage family (born in country or immigrated), foreign family, and North Korean migrant family and compared each category with the whole students. First, for each school class we analyzed characteristics of academic achievement by ratio of achievement level, means of calibrated score, and percentages of correct answers in NAEA, mean percentages of correct answers by content domains, and percentages of correct answers by items. In addition to these we analysed items qualitatively and investigated study conditions in which the students of multicultural and North Korean migrant families have difficult times. In every subgroup the more ratio of advanced level decreases and ratio of below basic level increases the more school classes go up. Also these phenomena appear differently by each group and by content domain. For this reason by group, the supporting on learning will be needed.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.497-524
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• 2011

This study was to understand students' learning about the function of math combined with molecular motions of science using the block scheduling. It was based on the revised Class Structure Model of Lee et al.(2010) where MBL as a tool was used to increase students' participation and understanding in the integrated concepts. The researcher provided the 6th grade students who lived in Sung Nam-Si, Kyung Gi-Do with 8 unit lessons, consisting of 5 stages of CSM. As a result of the study, the integrated education of Mathematics and Science showed synergic effect in studying both subjects and brought a positive result in gradual mathematization. It may be hard to combine all the contents of mathematics and science together. However, learning the relation between volume and pressure, and between volume and temperature of gas used as an example of function shown in our daily life was appropriate through Fogarty's integrated education model because it supported the objective of both subjects. Also, it was a good idea to develop CSM because it was composed of the contents from both subjects held in the same period of a year. Through the five stages, students were able to establish and generalize the definitions and the concepts of function.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.127-145
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• 2007

There have been several international lesson studies such as TIMSS Video Study and Learner's Perspective Study. According to the TIMSS Video Study report, within differences found in the lessons in each country is much less than the between differences found in the lessons across countries. This means that each country has its own way of teaching, so called 'national script'. On the contrary, LPS researchers are skeptical about the existence of 'national script' since significant differences are identified within the lessons conducted by the same teacher. The purpose of this study is to analyze the LPS Korean data in terms of class organization and teacher's approach and activities. The categories of class organization are classwork, small group seatwork, and individual seatwork, and the those of teacher's approach and activities are exploratory, directive, summarization, exercises and practice, and assigning homework. Ten lessons were videotaped from two Korean schools respectively, thus altogether twenty lessons were recorded and analyzed. Each lesson shows unique class approach and teacher's approach and activities, however the average of each category in class organization and teacher's approach and activities for the two schools are very similar. This result supports the TIMSS Video Study in the regard that there is a commonality among the lessons within the country, but also confirms the LPS result that it is difficult to assume 'national script'. This study is a preliminary investigation into the LPS Korean data, and the further in-depth interpretation of LPS lessons will be followed.

• School Mathematics
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.389-413
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• 2009

This thesis assumes that the teaching objective of the Probability unit of the 8th grade textbook under the 7th National Curriculum is to enhance the ability to analyze and utilize informations. And we examine them if this point of view is fully reflected. Based on the analysis of the textbook analysis, followings are found. 1) It is necessary to emphasize more enumerating all possible cases and to induce formulae counting the number of possible cases through organizing them 2) The probability is to be decribed more clearly as a likelihood of events and to be introduced and followed through various students' experiences and the relative frequencies. Less emphasis on probability computations, while more emphasis on probability comparisons of events are recommended. 3) The term "influential events"(a kind of stochastic correlation) is ambiguous. It is necessary to make clear what it means at tile level of the 8th grade or to discard it for it is to be learned at the 10th grade again. Especially, contingency table has been introduced at the 9th grade under the 7th National Curriculum. 4) Uses of the likelihood principle in making a decision and in learning the reliability of it should be encouraged. And students are to team the hazard of transitive inferences in probability comparisons. As a consequence of above, we feel that textbook authors and related stakeholder are to be more serious about the behavioral changes of students that may come along with the didactics of specific contents of school mathematics.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.63-80
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• 2009

This paper has a purpose to find out the important points about linguistic factors suited to the assessment purpose and mathematics teaching/learning that a word-problem sentence has to possess. We also examine the degree of understanding of sentence and the perceptive/emotional reactions of students toward two different kinds of word-problem sentences that have same mathematical contents, but different linguistic structures. The objects of this thesis are 124 students from the third to sixth grade in an elementary school. We execute assessment of simple-sentence-word-problem and complex-sentence-word-problem that have same mathematical contexts, but different linguistic structures. Then we have compared and examined their own process of solving the two types word-problems and we make up questionnaire and have an interview with them. The conclusions are as followings: First, simple-sentence-word-problem is more successful to suggest an information for solving a problem than complex one. Second, it is hard to find the strategy for solving a problem in complex-sentence-word-problem than simple one. Third, students think that suggested information and mathematical knowledge are different according to the linguistic structure in the process of perceiving the information after reading a word-problem. Fourth, in spite of same sentence type, the negative mental reaction is showed greatly to complex-sentence-word-problem even before solving a problem.

• School Mathematics
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.603-617
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• 2013

The major purpose of this article is to examine what kind of gap exists between mathematically gifted students' probability knowledge and the reality actually applying that knowledge and then analyze the cause of the gap. To attain the goal, 23 elementary mathematically gifted students at the highest level from G region were provided with problem situations internalizing a probability and expectation, and the problems are in series in which conditions change one by one. The study task is in a gaming situation where there can be the most reasonable answer mathematically, but the choice may differ by how much they consider a certain condition. To collect data, the students' individual worksheets are collected, and all the class procedures are recorded with a camcorder, and the researcher writes a class observation report. The biggest reason why the students do not make a decision solely based on their own mathematical knowledge is because of 'impracticality', one of the properties of probability, that in reality, all things are not realized according to the mathematical calculation and are impossible to be anticipated and also their own psychological disposition to 'avoid loss' about their entry fee paid. In order to provide desirable probability education, we should not be limited to having learners master probability knowledge included in the textbook by solving the problems based on algorithmic knowledge but provide them with plenty of experience to apply probabilistic inference with which they should make their own choice in diverse situations having context.