• School Mathematics
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-15
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• 2010

The study presented in this paper, which serves as a pilot study for a future comprehensive project, was to investigate how students deal with the concepts of infinity and limit. Based on the communicational approach to cognition, according to which mathematics is a kind of discourse, we tried to identify the characteristics of students' discourse on the topics. Four American and four Korean students were interviewed in English on limits and infinity and their discourse was scrutinized with an eye to common characteristics as well as culture, age, and education-related differences.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.493-508
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• 2009

This study investigates aspects of the zone of proximal development (ZPD), the distance between the actual development and the potential development. Out of 18 university students taking a geometry course, two students with the same actual developmental level in the van Hiele model in the pre-test and post-test were interviewed for measuring their potential developmental level. Based on the communicational approach to cognition, the characteristics of the two interviewees' discourse on 3D reflective symmetry were identified. There were considerable differences between the two interviewees in terms of their potential developmental level. Methodological implications for how to investigate students' ZPD in mathematics education research were addressed.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.33-55
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• 2011

This study explores the characteristics of calculus students' and instructors' discourses on the derivative using a communicational approach to cognition. The data were collected from surveys, classroom observations, and interviews. The results show that the instructors did not explicitly address some aspects of the derivative such as the relationship between the derivative function (f'(x)) and the derivative at a point (f'(a)), and f'(x) as a function, and that students incorrectly described or used these aspects for problem solving. It is also found that both implicitness in the instructors' discourse, and students' incorrect descriptions were closely related to their use of the word, "derivative" without specifying it as "the derivative function" or "the derivative at a point." Comparison between instructors' and students' discourses suggests that explicit discussion about the derivative including exact use of terms will help students see the relationship that f'(a) is a number, a point-specific value of f'(x) that is a function, and overcome their mixed and incorrect notion "the derivative" such as the tangent line at a point.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.433-452
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to provide implications for improvement of mathematics textbook based on discursive approach to textbook analysis that complementarily combines a communicational approach to cognition and social semiotics. For this purpose, we reconstructed an analytic framework for discursive approach to written discourses of Korean textbook and CMP, and applied it to our analysis. Results show that several characteristics in meanings were developed by the use of words and visual mediators. First, in the case of ideational meaning, there were qualitative and quantitative differences between vocabularies used and between information addressed by visual mediators. Second, in the case of structural meaning, an offer and application of procedure was emphasized in a Korean textbook, whereas expectation and selection experiences of diverse possibilities for problem solving was underlined in CMP. In the case interpersonal meaning of student-author, imperative instructions were paid attentions in a Korean textbook. In contrast, students' interdependence and active participation were stressed in CMP. Therefore, this study addressed ideas about how to analyze mathematics textbooks based on integrated meanings developed by the use of words and visual mediators. In addition, it distributes implications for improvements of Korean mathematics textbooks through the analytic framework of both mathematical meanings and interpersonal meanings of student-author.