• The Mathematical Education
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.199-210
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• 2004

This study investigates 55 preservice secondary mathematics teachers' situational understanding of functional relationship. Functional thinking is fundamental and useful because it develops students' quantitative thinking about the world and analytical thinking about complex situations through examination of the relations between interdependent factors. Functional thinking is indispensable for understanding natural phenomena, for investigation by science, and for the technological inventions in engineering and navigation. Therefore, it goes without saying that teachers should be able to represent and communicate about various functional situations in the course of teaching and learning functional relationships to develop students' functional thinking. The result of this study illustrates that many preservice teachers were not able to appropriately represent and communicate about various functional situations. Additionally, it shows that most preservice teachers have limited understanding of the value of teaching function.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.265-276
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• 2012

These days, with the emphasis on statistical literacy, the importance of communication is the focus of attention. Communication about statistics is important since it is a way of describing the understanding of concepts and the interpretation of data. However, students usually have trouble with expressing what they understand, especially through writing. In this paper, we examined preservice teachers' difficulties when they wrote about statistical concepts. By comparing preservice teachers' written responses and interview transcripts of the variance concept task, we could find the missing information in their written language compared to their verbal language. From the results, we found that preservice teachers had difficulty in connecting terms contextually and conceptually, presenting various factors of the concepts that they considered, and presenting the problem solving strategies that they used.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.353-371
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to investigate preservice secondary teachers' understanding and modification capacity of tasks from mathematics textbooks. This study conducted a survey about how preservice teachers understand the features of mathematical tasks and how they would select and modify tasks appropriately from the curriculum and for lesson goals. The findings from the analysis suggest that the preservice teachers seem to recognize Procedures Without Connections tasks as the high-level tasks. Further, 43 percent of the total numbers appropriately selected the tasks from the curriculum and for lesson goals. Most of the preservice teachers appear to find it difficult to modify low-level tasks into high-level tasks.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.105-120
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• 2023

With the rapid advancement of educational technology, recent studies have connected teachers' professional noticing with the use of digital resources in mathematical instructions. In this study, I examined elementary mathematics preservice teachers' attending and interpreting a mathematical software, ST Math, in the exploring and implementing phases. The findings indicate that preservice teachers paid attention to visual representations and manipulation prior to interactions with children and further took into consideration on task structures and situated context after interactions. They interpreted the events based on connected mathematical knowledge of prior interactions and further reflected on the progression of problem-solving strategies and sequence of tasks. In addition, four distinctive profiles of transitioning of evaluation on ST Math activities were identified with illustrations. Implications for noticing and teacher education were discussed.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.101-115
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• 2017

This study was to analyze motivations in the mathematics lessons from the perspectives of preservice elementary school teachers. The participants were three groups of 62 preservice elementary teachers who were sophomore or junior students in Seoul city in Korea. Two groups of the students were enrolled at teaching and learning mathematics courses, whereas one group of students were at mathematics problem solving course. They were randomly assigned to elementary schools for their student teaching. They were required to observe mathematics lessons focusing on motivations during their participating at the two-week student teaching period. The preservice teachers were asked to observe and submit the reports of the observation in the mathematics lesson. The researcher suggested a guideline of observation and analyzed the reports according to the categories those were suggested in the guideline. The results of the analysis on the reports are summarized as follows. First, the preservice elementary school teachers considered the purpose of motivations as attracting students' interest. Second, the major ratio of motivations were attracting students' attention in the mathematics lessons. Third, the duration average time was 5 minutes 50 seconds and only limited materials for the motivations. At last, most mathematics lessons need to stimulate students' curiosity that fits to the objectives of the lessons. The researcher suggests that we need to develop various motivations in mathematics lessons with which teachers should subtlely connected to the objectives of the lessons.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.311-331
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• 2014

For preservice teachers' instrumental-to-relational pedagogical content knowledge transformations, this research designed several didactical tasks based on Kinach's cognitive strategies. The researcher identified preservice teachers' understanding about what is a definition and how to teach it. By challenging their fixed ideas about definitions, the researcher could motivate them to embrace the new teaching approach which guides reinvention of definitions. The PCK development was not the simple process of filling their tabular rasa PCK with theories of mathematics education, but the dialectical process of identifying, challenging, changing and extending preservice teachers' existent PCK. This research will contribute to explore new directions of mathematics teachers' PCK development and the method of teacher education.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.45 no.1 s.112
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• pp.105-121
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to investigate preservice secondary mathematics teachers' knowledge about graphical representation and provide implications for better mathematics teaching and learning in our schools. For this purpose, sixty-three preservice teachers were selected and given diverse graphical representation problems of y=1, y=x, x=0, $x^2+y^2=1$. All preservice teachers completed two types of questionnaires. First type is about constructing the graphs of the above each equation, and the second one is to make them find the appropriate graphs from given examples of the each equation. The results indicated that all the participant pre service teachers were unable to construct graphs in terms of various dimensions and various direction of coordinate axis. All of the participants represented the graph of each equation on only two-dimensional coordinate system. In addition, some preservice teachers believed that the axis of coordinates have to be x-axis on horizontal line and y-axis on vertical line. From this study, it is implicated that pre service teacher education program needs to provide the experience of representing the graphs of equation in terms of various dimensions and various direction of coordinate axis so as to develop their future students the flexibility and creativity in mathematical thinking especially in the area of space perception.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.59 no.1
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• pp.47-62
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• 2020

Understanding the concept of probability distribution becomes more important. We considered probabilities defined in the sample space, the definition of discrete random variables, the probability of defined discrete probability distribution, and the relationship between them as knowledge of discrete probability distribution, and investigated the understanding degree of the mathematics preservice teachers. The results are as follows. Firstly, about 70% of preservice teachers who participated in this study expressed discrete probability distribution graphs in ordered pairs or continuous distribution. Secondly, with regard to the two factors for obtaining discrete probability distributions: probability for each element in the sample space and the concept of random variables that convert each element in the sample space into a real value, only 13% of the preservice teachers understood and addressed both factors. Thirdly, 39% of the preservice teachers correctly responded to whether different probability distributions can be defined for one sample space. Fourthly, when the probability of each fundamental event was determined to obtain the probability distribution of the discrete random variables defined in the undefined sample space, approximately 70% habitually calculated by the uniform probability. Finally, about 20% of preservice teachers understood the meaning and relationship of binomial distribution, discrete random variables, and sample space. In relation, clear definitions and full explanations of concept need to be provided from textbooks and a program to improve the understanding of preservice teachers need to be developed.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.423-446
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• 2022

This study explores and compares Korean and U.S. elementary preservice teachers' analytic approaches of students' addition and subtraction computational strategies. Twenty-six Korean and twenty U.S. elementary preservice teachers participated in the study. Participants were asked to analyze mathematical approaches and errors from students' addition and subtraction operations. Preservice teachers' written documents were analyzed by applying open coding and inductive coding based on the grounded theory. As a result, the pattern of error analysis and interpretation of students' addition computations were similar for both Korean and U.S. preservice teachers whereas there were some differences in the analysis of students' subtraction computations. Both Korean and U.S. preservice teachers had difficulties identifying students' strategies and errors for a complicated and unconventional computational approach. Results also indicated that preservice teachers' noticing and interpretation of students' strategies and errors were influenced by their K-12 mathematics curriculum and teacher education program. This study suggests implications and future directions for teacher education, more contextualized teacher preparation programs and balanced connection to the K-12 curriculum.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.329-350
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• 2019

Productive struggle is a student's persevering effort to understand mathematical concepts and solve challenging problems that are not easily solved, but the problem can lead to curiosity. Productive struggle is a key component of students' learning mathematics with a conceptual understanding, and supporting it in learning mathematics is one of the most effective mathematics teaching practices. In comparison to research on students' productive struggles, there is little research on preservice mathematics teachers' productive struggles. Thus, this study focused on the productive struggles that preservice mathematics teachers face in solving a non-routine mathematics problem. Polya's four-step problem-solving process was used to analyze the collected data. Examples of preservice teachers' productive struggles were analyzed in terms of each stage of the problem-solving process. The analysis showed that limited prior knowledge of the preservice teachers caused productive struggle in the stages of understanding, planning, and carrying out, and it had a significant influence on the problem-solving process overall. Moreover, preservice teachers' experiences of the pleasure of learning by going through productive struggle in solving problems encouraged them to support the use of productive struggle for effective mathematics learning for students, in the future. Therefore, the study's results are expected to help preservice teachers develop their professional expertise by taking the opportunity to engage in learning mathematics through productive struggle.