• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.395-418
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of mathematical tasks on mathematical communication. Mathematical tasks were classified into four different levels according to cognitive demands, such as memorization, procedure, concept, and exploration. For this study, 24 students were selected from the 5th grade of an elementary school located in Seoul. They were randomly assigned into six groups to control the effects of extraneous variables on the main study. Mathematical tasks for this study were developed on the basis of cognitive demands and then two different tasks were randomly assigned to each group. Before the experiment began, students were trained for effective communication for two months. All the procedures of students' learning were videotaped and transcripted. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied to analyze the data. The findings of this study point out that the levels of mathematical tasks were positively correlated to students' participation in mathematical communication, meaning that tasks with higher cognitive demands tend to promote students' active participation in communication with inquiry-based questions. Secondly, the result of this study indicated that the level of students' mathematical justification was influenced by mathematical tasks. That is, the forms of justification changed toward mathematical logic from authorities such as textbooks or teachers according to the levels of tasks. Thirdly, it found out that tasks with higher cognitive demands promoted various negotiation processes. The results of this study implies that cognitively complex tasks should be offered in the classroom to promote students' active mathematical communication, various mathematical tasks and the diverse teaching models should be developed, and teacher education should be enhanced to improve teachers' awareness of mathematical tasks.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.583-613
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• 2010

Mathematics anxiety is likely to be a drag on mathematics learning if that is left alone, and it is important to grasp the cause of mathematics anxiety and devise how to get rid of it. The purpose of this study was to examine the cause of mathematics anxiety among elementary school children, to develop a math-friendly activity program geared toward easing mathematics anxiety and to check the effect of the developed program on the alleviation of mathematics anxiety. The subjects in this study were 32 students in a fourth-grade class in I elementary school located in Dongdaemoon-gu, Seoul. A math-friendly activity program was designed to alleviate the mathematics anxiety of the five subfactors-test anxiety, time constraints, comprehension, learning motivation and parent attitude-on which the students scored higher than their pretest collective averages. The mathematics anxiety pretest data, the objectives and content system of the current 7th national mathematics curriculum and the mathematics textbooks for 4-A and 4-B were analyzed to develop the math-friendly activity program that consisted of psychological remedy (positive thinking training) and non-psychological remedy (mathematics activities). After the program was implemented, we analyze the pretest and posttest mathematics anxiety data to determine the effect of the program. As a result, the collective averages of every student on math anxiety and its subfactors were lower in the posttest than in the pretest.

• School Mathematics
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.379-396
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to analyze characteristics of problem solving in mathematics for gifted students through case study on solving the mathematical problem for gifted students, and to investigate what are relationships with the cognitive and affective characteristics. To this end, this study was to analyze the characteristics on the problem solving in mathematics by using qualitative research method after it selected two students who had specific education for brilliant students. As a result, this study has shown that it had high preference for question with clear answer, high preference for individual inquiry learning, high adhesion to answer for question, and high adhesion for assignment on characteristics of process of problem solving, but there was much difference in spirit of competition. As to the characteristics of thoughts in problem solving, this study has shown that it had high grasp capacity, intuitive insight, and capacity for visualization, but there were differences in capacity for generalization and adaptability. However, both two students had low values in deductive thought. In addition, as to the home environment and cognitive and affective characteristics, they were not related to the characteristics on problem solving directly, but it has shown that it affected each other indirectly. As to the conclusion of this study, this researcher thinks that it will be valuable documentation in order to improve curriculum, development of textbooks, and teaching method for special education for the gifted students and education for secondary mathematics.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.157-170
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• 2017

Mathematics was the main domain of PISA 2012, and both paper-based and computer-based assessment of mathematics (CBAM) were conducted. PISA 2012 was the first large-scale computer-based mathematics assessment in Korea, and it is meaningful in that it evaluated students' mathematical literacy in problem situations using dynamic geometry, graph, and spreadsheet. Although Korea ranked third in CBAM, the use of ICT in mathematics lessons appeared to be low. On the other hand, this study focused on Singapore, which ranked first in CBAM. The Singapore Ministry of Education developed online programs such as AlgeTools and AlgeDisc, and implemented the programs in classes by specifying them in mathematics curriculum and textbooks. Thus, this study investigated influential factors on computer-based assessment of mathematics by comparing the results of Korea and Singapore, and aimed to provide meaningful evidence on the direction of Korea's ICT-based mathematics education. The results showed that ICT use at home for school related tasks, attitudes towards computers as a tool for school learning, and openness and perseverance of problem solving were positively associated with computer-based mathematics performance, whereas the use of ICT in mathematics class by teacher demonstration was negatively related. Efforts are needed to improve computer use and enhance teaching techniques related to ICT use in Korean math classes. Future research is recommended to examine how effectively teachers use ICT in mathematics class in Singapore.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.946-958
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was to investigate factors in school science influencing students' attitudes toward science. In order to achieve the purpose, a total of 1,002 students at 5th, 7th, and 10th grade levels was sampled and surveys were carried out to examine attitudes toward science and reasons that students liked and disliked science. According to the results, male students liked science more than female students did at all grade levels and 10th graders liked science less than 5th and 7th graders did. The main reason that students liked science was experiments. And the main reason that students disliked science was science teaching methods including science activities, instructional materials, science textbooks and science teachers. Among the reasons that students liked science, factors that affected attitudes toward science were contents and characteristics of science subjects and experiments. Among the reasons that students disliked science, factors that affected attitudes toward science were experiments and science teaching methods. The results suggest that it is desirable to apply appropriate methods according to students' interests in science to develop positive attitudes toward science effectively.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.267-275
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• 2015

This research purports to find out the characteristics of Korean students cognitive attributes and compare it with that of high-achieving countries who took TIMSS 2011 based on the Cognitive Diagnostic Theory. Based on TIMSS 2011 Science framework, nine cognitive attributes were extracted and the researcher analyzed that 216 of the TIMSS 2011 science items require these attributes. This analysis was conducted to come up with a Q-matrix. After producing the Q-matrix, multi-level IRT was used to figure out each countries' characteristics for each of the cognitive attribute. According to the study results, four attributes, such as 'Use Models,' 'Interpret Information,' 'Draw Conclusions,' and 'Evaluate and justify' were easier attributes for Korean middle school students. However, the other five attributes such as 'Recall/Recognize', 'Explain', 'Classify', 'Integrate', 'Hypothesize and Design' were considered as harder attributes compared to other countries. Korean students also considered 'Interpret Information' as the easiest attributes, and 'Explain' as the hardest attributes of all. For Korean students, those attributes considered to be easy were the easiest and hard attributes as the hardest compared to other countries, showing very extreme cases. Therefore, to give students more meaningful learning experience, it is better to use all the attributes altogether rather than use specific attributes while constructing Science curriculum or textbooks.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.475-484
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• 1999

This study was to investigate the effective order of instruction for students learning the concepts of chemical change. Chemical change was considered as the important area in 8th grade chemistry part. The study consisted of 168 8th grade students, two classes of boys and girls each, from a middle school in Seoul. They were divided into two groups, the experimental group and the control group. The control group was taught in the order, which was presented in the science textbook; chemical change, atom, and molecule (CAM). For the experimental group, the order was molecule, atom, and chemical change (MAC). From the results of the study, there was a statistically significant difference between the control group and the experimental group. But the interviews indicated that the students were confused with the MAC method in spite of the effective learning. Therefore, for more effective concepts learning without a confusion, we need to provide our students with various learning sequences of science textbooks rather than fixed learning sequences.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.774-783
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to survey the secondary science teachers' viewpoints of basic particles conceptions addressed in science course. The first content of this study was to analyze the secondary science teachers conceptions related to basic particles founded on scientific history viewpoints. The second content was to investigate their understanding of relations between atom, element, and molecule concepts. The third content was to search the factors influenced on basic particles conceptions of science teachers. For this study, 96 secondary science teachers were selected. The data of this study were collected through a questionnaire developed for this study and were analysed using the method of constant comparative analysis. The results showed that their viewpoints towards basic particles were similar to each other regardless of their majors and their conceptions belonged to the past viewpoints. The teachers lacked linking understand among basic particles conceptions because they applied different viewpoints on different problems. Most of the teachers were influenced on science textbooks, guidebooks for teachers, and reference books to form confusing viewpoints of basic particles.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.337-344
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to analyze field trip activities in the elementary school science textbook developed under the 7th national curriculum. The results indicated there was an average of 4.25 field trip activities each semester presented in the textbook from the 3rd to 6th grade, mostly related to earth science and biology. The places for field trips were limited to in-school environment and natural sites in communities, and mostly purported to gain understanding of rudimentary concepts. Field trip activities were intended to facilitate science knowledge and understanding in order to integrate with the textbook content rather than offering students simple one-time activities. Most activities in the textbook guided students step by step. The starting or follow-up activities in the fields trips and reminder for cautions were not clearly presented. In order for the field trips to integrate with the content of the curriculum in the text book, they have to be presented in the textbook systematically. It is also imperative to find out various fold trip places related to the content in the curriculum, develop efficient activities dealing with science at the appropriate level for students and increasing interests in science and its teaming.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.29-47
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to compare and analyze the inquiry tasks included in the elementary social studies with school library based instruction (SLBI) focused on the information literacy process and select teacher librarians' educational role under learning for social studies. For this purpose, national elementary curriculum of $4^{th}$, $5^{th}$ and $6^{th}$ social studies in the second term are analyzed. As results of analysis, the $4^{th}$ and $5^{th}$ students who take part in solving the inquiry tasks could compare and analyze illustrations, photographs and texts in their text books individually and present the results with speaking. The $6^{th}$ students could deal with their tasks using their experience, idea or information found from other resources and express the outcome orally according to the content of inquiry tasks. Therefore, teacher librarians could teach information literacy skills such as comparison, contrast, combination, distinction between opinions and facts, or prediction and inference of conclusion to the $4^{th}$ and $5^{th}$ elementary student. Teacher librarians can also participate in whole information literacy instruction for the $6^{th}$ students from building the solution strategies of tasks, collecting and using materials to completing and evaluating the results under the long term collaboration with the classroom teachers.