• School Mathematics
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.447-466
• /
• 2007

Math education in schools have to enable students to understand the importance of math and nurture the capacity to resolve various problems in daily life with reasoning, which is therefore, always applicable to the actual world. Proportional reasoning capacity is being often used in daily life, and some kind of unit is not fixed. So students are considering it very difficult. This study looks into the difficulties that students have in proportional reasoning, what kind of problem solving strategy is being used, what the problems are in current textbooks, etc. Based on this, it tried to check the concept changes in students' proportional reasoning by developing the instruction program for 'proportional expression' unit in the 6th grade. Based on the results, this study analyzes the features of proportional reasoning instruction programs and the instruction results. Also it analyzes in-advance & after examination papers of the experimental class and comparison class to contribute to the instruction method and instruction contents improvement of 'proportional expression' unit.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.23-31
• /
• 1998

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the development of elementary school student's reasoning strategies used in proportional tasks. Three hundred and ninety elementary students were sampled to investigate their reasoning strategies used in Pouring Water Tasks. Results showed that 4 percentage of students used proportional reasoning strategy. By the way, about 80 % of students used qualitative guess or additive strategies to solve proportion tasks. Further, about fifth-grade or 11-year-old students began to use proportional reasoning strategy. Also, female and malt students' development of reasoning strategies improved from 1st grade across 5th grade and from 6-year-old across 11-year-old. However, female did not show the improvement of strategy development after 5th-grade or 11-year-old. However, male students showed a continuous improvement after the grade or age. In addition, students showed developmental patterns of spurts and plateau, ra thor than a linear developmental pattern. The present study also discussed educational implications of this findings in school curriculum.

• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.46 no.3
• /
• pp.315-329
• /
• 2007

The concepts of ratio, rate, and proportion are used in everyday life and are also applied to many disciplines such as mathematics and science. Proportional reasoning is known as one of the pivotal ideas in school mathematics because it links elementary ideas to deeper concepts of mathematics and science. However, previous research has shown that it is difficult for students to recognize the proportionality in contextualized situations. The purpose of this study is to understand how the mathematical concept in the middle school mathematics curriculum is connected with ratio, rate, and proportion and to investigate the characteristics of proportional reasoning through analyzing the concept including ratio, rate, and proportion on the middle school mathematics curriculum. This study also examines mathematical concepts (direct proportion, slope, and similarity) presented in a middle school textbook by exploring diverse interpretations among ratio, rate, and proportion and by comparing findings from literature on proportional reasoning. Our textbook analysis indicated that mechanical formal were emphasized in problems connected with ratio, rate, and proportion. Also, there were limited contextualizations of problems and tasks in the textbook so that it might not be enough to develop students' proportional reasoning.

• School Mathematics
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.421-440
• /
• 2003

It is difficult for the learner to understand completely the ratio concept which forms a basis of proportional reasoning. And proportional reasoning is, on the one hand, the capstone of children's elementary school arithmetic and, the other hand, it is the cornerstone of all that is to follow. But school mathematics has centered on the teachings of algorithm without dealing with its essence and meaning. The purpose of this study is to analyze the essence of ratio concept from multidimensional viewpoint. In addition, this study will show the direction for improvement of ratio concept. For this purpose, I tried to analyze the historical development of ratio concept. Most mathematicians today consider ratio as fraction and, in effect, identify ratios with what mathematicians called the denominations of ratios. But Euclid did not. In line with Euclid's theory, ratio should not have been represented in the same way as fraction, and proportion should not have been represented as equation, but in line with the other's theory they might be. The two theories of ratios were running alongside each other, but the differences between them were not always clearly stated. Ratio can be interpreted as a function of an ordered pair of numbers or magnitude values. A ratio is a numerical expression of how much there is of one quantity in relation to another quantity. So ratio can be interpreted as a binary vector which differentiates between the absolute aspect of a vector -its size- and the comparative aspect-its slope. Analysis on ratio concept shows that its basic structure implies 'proportionality' and it is formalized through transmission from the understanding of the invariance of internal ratio to the understanding of constancy of external ratio. In the study, a fittingness(or comparison) and a covariation were examined as the intuitive origins of proportion and proportional reasoning. These form the basis of the protoquantitative knowledge. The development of sequences of proportional reasoning was examined. The first attempts at quantifying the relationships are usually additive reasoning. Additive reasoning appears as a precursor to proportional reasoning. Preproportions are followed by logical proportions which refer to the understanding of the logical relationships between the four terms of a proportion. Even though developmental psychologists often speak of proportional reasoning as though it were a global ability, other psychologists insist that the evolution of proportional reasoning is characterized by a gradual increase in local competence.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.103-121
• /
• 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 For Science Education
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.503-516
• /
• 1998

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate some variables, such as learner's cognitive characteristics and a training-program emphasized proportional logic, in proportional reasoning development. Seven hundred and ninety students in junior high schools were enrolled as subjects for the study which investigated learner's cognitive characteristics in proportional reasoning development and asked to perform tests of logical thinking, card sorting, planning, mental capacity, cognitive style, brain lateralization, information processing pattern and scientific reasoning. In addition, one hundred and thirty-three students who failed to solve proportional thinking items were administered a training program which has been applied to improve the subjects' proportional reasoning skills. The results showed a significant higher correlation between subjects' performance score on proportional thinking test, and their age and scores on scientific reasoning test, mental capacity, information processing test and perseveration errors on card sorting test. Also, the training program applied in this study showed an effective result in developing subjects' proportional reasoning skills. Further, this study may serve as a suggestion in the efforts to investigate factors of proportional thinking development and a contribution for the future research in other logical thinking development.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.457-484
• /
• 2015

This study aims to investigate an approach to teach proportional reasoning in elementary mathematics class by analyzing the proportional strategies the students use to solve the proportional reasoning tasks and their percentages of correct answers. For this research 174 sixth graders are examined. The instrument test consists of various questions types in reference to the previous study; the proportional reasoning tasks are divided into algebraic-geometric, quantitative-qualitative and missing value-comparisons tasks. Comparing the percentages of correct answers according to the task types, the algebraic tasks are higher than the geometric tasks, quantitative tasks are higher than the qualitative tasks, and missing value tasks are higher than the comparisons tasks. As to the strategies that students employed, the percentage of using the informal strategy such as factor strategy and unit rate strategy is relatively higher than that of using the formal strategy, even after learning the cross product strategy. As an insightful approach for teaching proportional reasoning, based on the study results, it is suggested to teach the informal strategy explicitly instead of the informal strategy, reinforce the qualitative reasoning while combining the qualitative with the quantitative reasoning, and balance the various task types in the mathematics classroom.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.719-743
• /
• 2013

Proportional reasoning is considered as a difficult concept to most elementary school students and might be connect to functional thinking, algebraic thinking, and mathematical thinking later. The purpose of this study is to analyze the sixth graders' development level of proportional reasoning so that children's problem solving processes on different proportional problem items were investigated in a way how the problem type of proportion and the degree of ill-structured affect to their levels. Results showed that the greater part of participants solved problems on the level of proportional reasoning and various development levels according to type of problem. In addition, they showed highly the level of transition and proportional reasoning on missing value problems rather than numerical comparison problems.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
• /
• 1996.04a
• /
• pp.531-535
• /
• 1996

Computer aided conceptual solution of engineering problems can be effectively implemented by qualitative reasoning based on a physical model. Qualitative reasoning needs modeling paradigm which provides intellignet control of modeling assumptions and robust inferences without quantitative information about the system. We developed reasoning method using new algebra of qualitative mathematics. The method is applied to a conceptual design scheme of anadaptive control system of cutting process. The method identifies differences between proportional and proportional-integral control scheme of cutting process. It is shown that unfeasible investment could be prevented in the early conceptual stage by the qualitative reasoning procedures proposed in this paper.

• School Mathematics
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.819-838
• /
• 2016

This research analyzed proportional reasoning abilities of the 5th grade students who learned only the basis of ratio and rate and 6th grade students who also learned proportion and cross product strategy. Data were collected through the proportional reasoning tests and the interviews, and then the achievement of the students and their proportional reasoning strategies were analyzed. In the light of such analytical results, the conclusions are as follows. Firstly, there is not much difference between 5th and 6th grade students in the achievement scores. Secondly, both 5th and 6th graders are less familiar with the geometric, qualitative and comparisons tasks than the other tasks. Thirdly, not only 5th graders but also 6th graders used informal strategies much more than the formal strategy. Fourthly, some students can't come up with other strategies than the cross product strategy. Finally, many students have difficulties in discerning proportional situation and non-proportional situations. This study provided suggestions for improving teaching proportional reasoning in elementary schools in Korea as follows: focusing on letting students use their informal strategies fluently in geometric, qualitative, and comparisons tasks as well as algebraic, quantitative, and missing value tasks focusing on the concept of ratio and proportion instead of enforcing the formal strategy.