• School Mathematics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.101-120
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• 2013

International comparative studies of students' performance in mathematics have shown that Korean students possess very negative attitudes toward mathematics, while they are ranked as one of the highest in the cognitive achievement of mathematics. This has prompted mathematics educators to seek for a way to improve the quality of mathematics education. In this context, this research has been conducted to investigate the learning style of Korean middle school students under the assumption that it is of essence to understand the characteristics of our students as mathematics learners. For the purpose, in-depth interview had been conducted and sixteen middle students participated in the interview. The students were chosen to represent the average group of their age-cohorts based on their performance in mathematics and their SES. The interview was designed as a semi-structured clinical interview. In the interview, the students were given mathematical tasks dealing with central themes in the domain of function. Each student was given about 30 to 50 minutes to solve the tasks. After an interviewee finished the tasks, s/he was asked to explained how s/he solved the tasks. The researchers asked additional questions to clarify the students' understanding of the mathematical themes in the tasks and to identify their strategies for learning mathematics. The analysis of the in-depth interview has primarily identified the characteristics of the students' understanding of the main themes in function and then has been extended to investigate their characteristic styles for learning mathematics. The analysis of the interview identified the learning styles of the students as 'inductive learning based on prototypical cases', 'repeated practice of exemplar mathematics problems', 'disengaged learning', and 'double standards in learning mathematics'. Based on the results of the analysis, this research presents the implications for the improvement of mathematics education.

• School Mathematics
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.323-343
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• 2011

The study of 2011 education course revision proposal suggests that middle school level function shall be taught with emphasis on its role as tool to understand the situations of actual world, and the concept shall be extended in high school into formularized setting that integrate various fields based on middle school function. In revising education course, the circumstances of other countries are desired to be considered to keep abreast of international standard education courses. In this study, the textbooks of Gesamtschule a general school a school type similar to the education system in Korea among various school forms of Germany were selected to look into the characteristics of function introduction and teaching & learning in Germany, and the textbooks were compared and analyzed with those of Korea. As a result of comparison and analysis on the system and contents with emphasis on function area, German textbooks differed from the 7th revised education course on the introduction of function concept, contents development method and method of instructing on graph etc. Such differences are anticipated to serve as data for reference in the development of revised education courses and textbooks in Korea.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.117-139
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• 2015

For the purpose of determining neurophysiological mechanism of math anxiety, we conducted an EEG measurement for 22 sixth grade elementary students including 11 students with high math anxiety (HMA group), and 11 students with low math anxiety (LMA group). We found that in HMA group, delta wave was significantly generated from the right frontal lobe, and in LMA group, four paths are clearly connected while they perform math tasks (right inferior occipital gyrus ${\leftrightarrow}$ left superior parietal lobule /left middle frontal gyrus ${\leftrightarrow}$ left inferior parietal lobule /left middle frontal gyrus ${\leftrightarrow}$ right inferior parietal lobule / right middle frontal gyrus ${\leftrightarrow}$ right inferior parietal lobule). According to the above results we suggest that math anxiety is related to emotions associated with pain, reduces working memory and has a negative effect on math performance.

• School Mathematics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.921-940
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• 2013

This study is to analyze mathematically gifted middle school students' characteristics of mathematical thinking and the teacher's role in teaching and learning about the central projection and perspective drawing. And it will help to develop teaching and learning materials for the mathematically gifted. The result of this study is as followings : mathematically gifted middle school students show the various characteristics of mathematical thinking like as intuitive insight, generalization, logical thinking & mathematical abstraction and so on, and the teacher plays roles as instructional designer, facilitator, technical assistant and counselor.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.373-394
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• 2016

The "Figure Equation" chapter of current high school curriculum prevents students from relating the concept with what they studied in middle school Euclidean geometry. Woo(1998) concerns that the curriculum introduces the concept merely in algebraic ways without providing students with opportunities to relate it with their prior understanding of geometry, which is based on Euclidean one. In the present study, a sequence of GeoGebra-embedded-geometry lessons was designed so that students could be introduced to and solve problems of the Analytic Geometry by triggering their prior understanding of the Euclidean Geometry which they had learnt in middle school. The study contributes to the field of mathematics education by suggesting a sequence of geometry lessons where students could introduce to the coordinate geometry meaningfully and conceptually in high school.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.81-101
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• 2008

This study points out that the way of teaching varies according to the kinds of figures in explaining the volume and the surface area of solid figures in the seventh grade curriculum. Especially, the study discusses the limitation of the explanation depending on the experimental method using physical objects. Considering the study of Archimedes' research about measuring sphere, we investigate its educational implications and, based on this result, suggest the complementary approach and the considerations for applying to current school mathematics curriculum.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.371-386
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• 2012

Spatial ability has been valued as one component of intelligence and as an talented domain. The researchers agree that spatial ability is associated with the achievements in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and important in STEM education. The purpose of this study is to assess Korean middle school students' spatial ability and compare Gifted Students and General Students' spatial ability. For this purpose, 'The Revised PSVT:R' was translated into Korean and administered 509 Korean middle school students, and also internal consistency reliability evidence and construct validity evidence of 'The Revised PSVT:R' were examined. This study explored the spatial ability of Korean middle school students (graded 7 through 9), and investigated association between spatial ability and students' mathematics achievement, the students' spatial ability according to their gender and grade level. As a result, this study shows that gifted students were better than general students in spatial ability. And there were significant correlations between spatial ability and mathematics, science, Korean language achievement. According to these results, spatial ability should be included as one of the important components in identifying students for gifted education programs.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.95-108
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• 2002

In this article we drew out five definition-methods in school geometry. They are called synonymous method, denotative method, analytic method. And we analyzed them theoretically. On our analysis we tried to identify the level of common sense and the level of science in definition of those two levels on the definition-methods of circle. While the definition-method in elementary school could be regarded as the level of common sense, that in middle school could be considered as the level of science. Finally, we made the following didactical comments. Definitions in school mathematics might have the levels as regard to their roles. Thus, Mathematics teachers, curriculum developers, and text authors all need to recognize the subtle differences in the level of definition-methods.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.295-322
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• 2021

This study was conducted for one semester through one group pretest-posttest design with 49 first-year middle school students to explore the effects of mathematics-centered STEAM class experiences on students' mathematical modeling abilities. The main results of this study are as follows: First, the results of the pre and post-mathematical modeling ability tests showed that the average score of posttest was improved compared to the pretest, and that the experiences of mathematics-centered STEAM classes provided in this study had a positive effect on improving the mathematical modeling ability of first-year middle school students. Second, STEAM classes were more effective in solving mathematical modeling problems that require students' creative and divergent thinking. Third, the content analysis of student responses for each subquestion showed that STEAM classes were especially more helpful in activating students' mathematical model construction and validating steps.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.265-274
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• 2003

To learn number system is a basic thing in school mathematics. In this paper, we analyze how number system is introduced in the 7th national curriculum and text books according to it. We found that the method of introducing number system is quite different from the former curriculum and former text books. There are many negative effects on the transition when compared with those of United States of America. There are many gaps between elementary school mathematics and middle school mathematics about levels and skills to deal with numbers. It is desirable to distinguish the negative sign from subtraction and to keep the concepts of commutativity and associativity of operations from the beginning. We also suggest to change the introducing timing and extension methods of number system in 7th grade mathematics.