• School Mathematics
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.547-561
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• 2010

Even though statistics is considered as one of the areas of mathematical science in the school curriculum, it has been well documented that statistics has distinct features compared to mathematics. However, there is little empirical educational research showing distinct features of statistics, especially research into the understanding of statistical concepts which are different from other areas in school mathematics. In addition, there is little discussion of a relationship between the ability of mathematical thinking and the ability of understanding statistical concepts. This study extracted some important concepts which consist of the fundamental statistical reasoning and investigated how mathematically high achieving students understood these concepts. As a result, there were both kinds of concepts that mathematically high achieving students developed well or not. There is a weak correlation between mathematical ability and the level of understanding statistical concepts.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.19-39
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• 2017

Taking samples of data and using samples to make inferences about unknown populations are at the core of statistical investigations. So, an understanding of the nature of sample as statistical thinking is involved in the area of statistical literacy, since the process of a statistical investigation can turn out to be totally useless if we don't appreciate the part sampling plays. However, the conception of sampling is a scheme of interrelated ideas entailing many statistical notions such as repeatability, representativeness, randomness, variability, and distribution. This complexity makes many people, teachers as well as students, reason about statistical inference relying on their incorrect intuitions without understanding sample comprehensively. Some research investigated how the concept of a sample is understood by not only students but also teachers or preservice teachers, but we want to identify preservice secondary mathematics teachers' understanding of sample as the statistical literacy by a qualitative analysis. We designed four items which asked preservice teachers to write their understanding for sampling tasks including representativeness and variability. Then, we categorized the similar responses and compared these categories with Watson's statistical literacy hierarchy. As a result, many preservice teachers turned out to be lie in the low level of statistical literacy as they ignore contexts and critical thinking, expecially about sampling variability rather than sample representativeness. Moreover, the experience of taking statistics courses in university did not seem to make a contribution to development of their statistical literacy. These findings should be considered when design preservice teacher education program to promote statistics education.

• Anxiety and mood
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.27-36
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• 2023

Interest in anxiety has a long history, and this topic has played a significant role in the field of mental health. The concept of anxiety has evolved diversely over time and across cultures, influencing our understanding, diagnosis, and treatment approaches for anxiety disorders. In this paper, we have reviewed and summarized various concepts and theories related to anxiety that have evolved over several centuries. Furthermore, we have examined how the diagnostic criteria in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) have changed within this historical context. A precise understanding of the history of the concept of anxiety and anxiety disorders is believed to have a positive impact on shaping the future path of anxiety disorders in psychiatry.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.221-249
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• 2006

The object of this study is to understand the characteristics of mathematical knowledge that elementary 5th graders have regarding the statistical variation concept and the changes after taking lessons. This study includes a pretest to examine the characteristics of mathematical knowledge that elementary 5th graders have regarding the statistical variation concept. And It was followed by a lesson on statistical variation concept to be able to correct error which was revealed by the inspection, and to improve good points. It turned out that after five lessons on the statistical variation concept, the insufficient aspects were properly improved, and as for the points they already understand, they came to understand better than before. They came to consider the statical variation concept instead of the frequency, preponderance, average, stable traits for the optimum value. Also, through the lesson on drawing tables and graphs, they came to better understand them, analyzing correctly the exercises in which tables and graphs were combined. When comparing data sets whose general distributions and extents were similar, students came up with the right answers in a stable way by considering averages combining statistical variation too. Since they tended to interpret a situation with their own subjective views adding conditions, teachers need to examine the proper situation and conditions prior to the lessons on the statistical variation concept.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.729-737
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• 2016

Natural selection is the core idea of evolution that pre-service biology teachers need to understand to solve diverse biological problem. This study aims to investigate the level of Korean pre-service biology teachers' understanding of natural selection by comparing their knowledge with their Chinese, American, and German biology major undergraduate counterparts. In particular, this study focuses on two conceptual components of natural selection (i.e., ecology and genetics). This study used a total 1226 pre-service biology teachers and biology majors' data. The instrument measuring the understanding of natural selection concepts was Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection, which consists of ten ecology concept items and ten genetics concept items. The Rasch model analysis, multivariate analysis of variance, and univariate analysis of variance were used for the statistical tests. The result reveals that the level of Korean pre-service biology teachers' understanding of natural selection were similar with Chinese undergraduates' understanding and significantly lower than American and German undergraduates.' In the first year student data, the level of genetics concept of Korean pre-service biology teachers were significantly lower than Chinese and German students. In the fourth year student data, the level of ecology concept of Korean pre-service biology teachers were significantly lower than American and German students. Based on these results, the ecology concept education and balanced natural selection concept education are discussed.

• 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.

• School Mathematics
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.727-743
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• 2014

The concepts of sample and sampling are central to the statistical thinking and foundations of the statistical literacy, so we need to be emphasized their importance in the statistics education. However, many researches which dealt with samples only analyze textbooks or students' responses. In this study, the concept of sample is addressed by a historical consideration which is one aspect of the didactical analysis. Moreover, developing concept of sample is analyzed from the preceding studies about the statistical literacy, considering the sample representativeness and the sampling variability. The results say that the historical process of developing the concept of sample can be divided into three step: understanding the sample representativeness; appearing the sample variance; recognizing the sampling variability. Above all, it is important to aware and control the sampling variability, but many related researches might not consider sample variability. Therefore, it implies that the awareness and control of sampling variability are needed to reflect to the teaching-learing of sample for developing the students' statistical literacy.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.31-43
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• 2001

The purposes of this study were grasping the degree of students' understanding for course contents through the concept mapping strategy as meaningful learning in science and measuring the effect for change of conception and changing the misconception. The results of the study were as follows: 1. Before the lesson, only 10.7％ of students had scientific conception of molecular motion. Other students had various kinds of misconceptions. 2. The extent of concept formation after lesson through the using concept mapping strategy was tested. As a result, compared with the controlled group, the experimental group showed higher extent of sound concept formation (statistical significance level 0.05). 3. The differences between the experimental group and the control group were analyzed into quantitative and qualitative points of view. The results of the comparison showed that the maps of the students were well configured in the categories of the relationship, the hierarchy and the examples; while students showed lower abilities in the category of the cross-links. 4. The student's attitudes to ward concept mapping was positive. Most of the students answered that teaching strategy of concept mapping benefits them in meaningful learning outcomes.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.467-490
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• 2013

Correlation is a basic statistical concept which is necessary for understanding the relationship between two variables when they change values. In the middle school curriculum of Korea, only informal definition of correlation is taught with two-way data representations such as scatter plots and contingency tables. In this study, we investigated Korean high school students' understanding of correlation using a test consisting of 35 items about interpretation of scatter plot, contingency table, and text in realistic situation. 216 students from a high school in Seoul took the test for 20 minutes. From the results, we could observe the following: First, students did not have right criteria for determining the strength of correlation presented in scatter plots. Most of students could determine if there is correlation/no correlation and if the correlation is positive/negative by seeing the data presented in scatter plots. However, they did not judge by the closeness to the regression line but rather judged by the closeness between data points. Second, when statements about comparing the strength of correlation in the context of real life situation were given in text, the students had difficulty in understanding the distribution-related characteristic of the bi-variate data. Students had difficulty in figuring out the local distribution characteristic of data, which cannot be guessed merely based on the expression 'The correlation is strong' without statistical knowledge of correlation. Third, a large number of students could not judge the association between two variabels using conditional proportions when qualitative data are given in 2-by-2 tables. They made judgement by the absolute cell count and when the marginal sum of two categories are different for explanatory variable they thought the association could not be determined. From these results, we concluded that educational measures are required in order to remove such misconceptions and to improve understanding of correlation. Considering that the current mathematics curriculum does not cover the concept of correlation, we need to improve the curriculum as well.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.101-115
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• 2012

Analogy, a plausible reasoning on the basis of similarity, is one of the thinking strategy for concept formation, problem solving, and new discovery in many disciplines. Statistics educators argue that analogy can be used as an useful thinking strategy in statistics as well. This study investigated the characteristics of students' analogical thinking in statistics. The mathematically gifted were asked to construct similar problems to a base problem which is a statistical problem having a statistical context. From the analysis of the problems, students' new problems were classified into five types on the basis of the preservation of the statistical context and that of the basic structure of the base problem. From the result, researchers provide some implications. In statistics, the problems, which failed to preserve the statistical context of base problem, have no meaning in statistics. However, the problems which preserved the statistical context can give possibilities for reconceptualization of the statistical concept even though the basic structure of the problem were changed.