• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.555-572
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• 2014

Teacher preparation programs are responsible for preparing teachers to be able to perform their work with professional knowledge and skills. What opportunities to learn such knowledge and skills the programs intentionally develop for prospective teachers can be discerned by looking at the curriculum of teacher education. The purpose of this study is to find implications for the curriculum in elementary teacher education in South Korea, especially as that pertains to opportunities to learn teaching mathematics. This paper compares the curricula of 21 teacher preparation programs for elementary teachers in South Korea and in the United States. It finds that the programs in both countries emphasize teacher preparation to teach subject matter and to help elementary students improve their academic knowledge. The overall structures of the curriculums outlined in the programs of both countries are relatively comparable. In terms of the opportunities to learn teaching mathematics, however, they are quite different in what authentic contents they offer. This paper discusses the need for more emphasis on mathematical knowledge for teaching.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.129-149
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• 2020

This study reports the results of analyzing the learning opportunities about the plane figures provided by the first and second grade mathematics textbooks. The plane figures that students learn during this period are important in that it serves as the basis for the later geometric education. With assumptions that mathematics learning is related to the problem of meaning and that meaning-related activity can be viewed as a symbolic activity, it adopts and uses the perspectives and tools of semiotics to analyze the learning opportunities provided by the mathematics textbook. The analysis of the semiotic process of the textbook activities revealed the significance of learning opportunities and helped to distinguish the seemingly similar learning opportunities. Based on the results of the analysis, I discussed the link between learning opportunities provided by grade 1 and grade 2 mathematics textbooks. Finally, the paper concludes with suggestions and conclusions and suggestions for further research.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.207-225
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• 2017

With a significant role of textbooks in shaping students' opportunities to learn, textbook analysis is essential to reveal these opportunities to learn the concept of area and volume. This research aims to show how the Korean textbooks pace students' learning of area and volume across grades by scrutinizing the textbooks with students' developmental sequences, called learning trajectories. Tasks about area and volume in all Korean elementary textbooks (grade 1 to 6) are coded with the specific developmental stages suggested in learning trajectories. As a result, we find considerable misalignment between the textbooks and the learning trajectories. The textbooks provide opportunities to experience developmental progressions of area and volume later than ages suggested in the learning trajectories. In addition, learning opportunities are significantly concentrated in grade 5 for area and grade 6 for volume with heavy emphases on applying formulas of area or volume. The findings from this research provides important implications concerning design of textbooks as well as improving students' opportunities in the mathematics classrooms.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.31-42
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to explore how elementary mathematics teachers' adaptations of a reform-oriented mathematics curriculum material in the USA, Everyday Mathematics, influence elementary students' opportunities to learn mathematics. I illustrate how elementary mathematics teachers alter the curriculum material and how such alterations influence their students' opportunities to learn mathematics in their mathematics classrooms. Results suggest that the teachers with Everyday Mathematics did not appear to maintain the cognitive demand of mathematical tasks as appeared in the curriculum material, as set up by the teacher, and as enacted in the classrooms. The results also show that the teachers seemed to omit components including important tasks and suggestions in the curriculum material. As a consequence, the students did not have an opportunity to think and understand mathematics conceptually and meaningfully; they were exposed and encouraged to learn mathematics procedurally.

• School Mathematics
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.605-617
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• 2010

This study explores the characteristics and roles of non-textual elements in secondary mathematics textbooks in the United States and South Korea, using a conceptual framework that I have developed: variety, contextuality, and connectivity. Analyzing five U.S. standards-based textbooks and 13 Korean textbooks, this study shows that although non-textual elements in mathematics textbooks are free of literal language, they exhibit different emphases and reflect assumptions about what is important in learning mathematics and how it can be taught and learned in a particular societal context (Mishra, 1999; Zazkis & Gadowsky, 2001). While there are similar patterns in the use of different types of non-textual elements in textbooks from both countries, different opportunities are provided for students to learn mathematics between the two countries.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.137-156
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• 2009

This case study examines language learners' oral interactive practices and what they learn along with these practices. Language learners who study abroad take on the challenge of living in a foreign place and undergo difficulties in communicating and interacting with people in their new country. These difficulties, caused by cultural differences, are experienced most particularly in their daily interactions. Language learners' trials and efforts to learn English while dealing with a different culture and the difficulties are mainly observed for this paper. The process of learning a second culture is closely related to the process of learning a second language. Oral interactive practices can give the study abroad language learners opportunities to learn their target culture. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss how participating in interactive practices assists the learners in understanding their target culture while they deal with their difficulties inherent in studying abroad. This study adds weight to the notion that culture is an essential and major factor in learning a language, and that only active participation in interactions can be effective in learning both a language and its culture.

• Asia-pacific Journal of Multimedia Services Convergent with Art, Humanities, and Sociology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.367-375
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to explore the reasons why Chinese marriage immigrant women do not teach their children to learn their mother tongue to second language and to present improvement plans about it. We have collected data mainly through in-depth-interview of four Chinese marriage immigrant women that have lived in Korea for more than 10 years from March to June, 2017. The results show that there are four environmental aspects why they do not teach their children to learn their mother tongue. First, their children are lack of access to learn Chinese. Second, their children do not want to learn Chinese because of the negative images of China in Korea. Third, Chinese marriage immigrant women are busy adjusting themselves to the Korean society so that they have no time to teach their children to learn Chinese. Lastly, Chinese marriage immigrant women are lack of confidence to teach their children to learn Chinese and Chinese culture, because it exist that Koreans have negative perceptions of other cultures. We hope that there will be opportunities for marriage immigrant women to teach their children to learn their mother tongue through this study.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.251-266
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• 2015

The statement, 'Taking more mathematics would result a better mathematics teacher.' sounds plausible. However, it is questionable that how much of taking university level of mathematics such as abstract algebra and real analysis would affect to teach elementary mathematics well. Would a mathematician be a better teacher for elementary students to teach mathematics than who has been prepared to teach elementary mathematics? This paper reports the effects of opportunities to learn tertiary level mathematics and school level mathematics on pre-service primary school teachers' mathematics pedagogical content knowledge. The study analyzed Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics 2008 (TEDS-M 2008) database using multiple regression. Prospective primary teachers who have been prepared as generalist were the focus of the study. The results support future elementary teachers might need to have opportunities to revisit school mathematics they are going to teach.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.58 no.1
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• pp.139-160
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• 2019

This study attempts to examine statistical tasks in the middle-school mathematics textbooks of Korea and Connected Mathematics 3 [CMP] of the US in terms of an opportunity-to-learn for statistical reasoning. We utilized an analytical framework consisting of types of context, statistical reasoning level, cognitive demand of the tasks, and types of student response. The findings from the task analysis suggested that Korean textbooks focused on finding answers by applying previously learned algorithms or formulas and thus provided students with very limited opportunities to experience statistical reasoning. Also, the results proposed that the mathematical tasks in statistics unit of CMP3 offer more essential and complex tasks that promote students' conceptual understanding of various statistical ideas and statistical reasoning in a meaningful way.

• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
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• v.94 no.2 s.159
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• pp.61-66
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• 2005

This research is based on a visitor survey at Jogyesan Provincial Park in Jeonnam, and its implications for interpretive planning. The research population was the set of weekend and holiday visitors, 20 years of age and older, to Jogyesan Provincial Park in Jeonnam, during the summer of 2003. A questionnaire was offered to every tenth person entering the park on every other weekend day and both holidays (June 1 and September 30). It was obvious that the interpretive program at Jogyesan Provincial Park, to meet the expectations of its visitors, should provide: (1) visitors with opportunities to experience the out-of-doors and learn about the cultural, historical and natural surroundings; (2) opportunities for the visitors to relax and escape from the normal and work environment; and (3) opportunities for the visitors to experience an atmosphere which enables them to achieve and self-actualize. In the area of interpretive programs, expectations are usually priorities, except for mountain climbing and exercise. Enhancing achievement and self-actualization is rarely a consideration and needs more emphasis in the future interpretive programs and plans.