• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.49 no.4
• /
• pp.463-488
• /
• 2010

The purpose of this study was providing implications in teaching and learning activities to vitalize mathematical communication and to raise positive attitudes about mathematics. We analyzed mathematical communication, disposition and attitudes of the students who had lower mathematical achievement rather than that of Korean language in class using reading materials and strategies. We found that teaching-learning activities using the reading materials and strategies let the low achievers in mathematics communicate more about mathematical notions and problem-solving process actively. The activities triggered interests and attention of mathematics and self-study. In addition, the lessons with reading materials and strategies aroused confidence, will and responsibility to mathematics learning to the students. They made the learners notice mathematics' values and roles and gave the opportunity of reflection about students' learning processes. As a result, the teaching-learning using reading materials and strategies should be developed and accomplished actively in classroom to turn mathematical inclination and attitudes of the students who had had negative inclination and attitudes to mathematics into those of positive and to vitalize mathematical communication to the lower achievers in mathematics.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.121-142
• /
• 2001

The purpose of this study is to investigate elementary teacher's beliefs and attitudes about mathematics and how those reflect their teaching practices. For this goal : (1) Designing questionnaire to measure elementary teachers' beliefs and attitudes about mathematics (2) Inquiring into character of elementary teacher's beliefs and attitudes about mathematics after analyzing questionnaire (3) Analyzing two teachers' mathematics teaching practices to understand how teacher's beliefs and attitudes affect mathematics teaching practices.

• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.54 no.2
• /
• pp.195-206
• /
• 2015

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of teacher on fourth-grade students' attitudes toward mathematics using data from TIMSS 2011. Students' attitudes toward mathematics included interest in learning mathematics, interest in mathematics lessons, and confidence in their mathematics ability. Teacher factors included mathematics professional development, confidence in teaching mathematics, teacher-centered mathematics instruction, and enhancing student mathematical thinking. The two level Hierarchical Linear Model was employed to analyze the relationship between teacher factors and student attitudes. Results showed that teacher-centered mathematics instruction significantly and positively predicted students' confidence about their mathematics ability. The findings suggest that school systems and mathematics educators need to provide teachers with the curriculum, assessment, and research-based practices and knowledge to overcome the obstacles to change their mathematics classroom.

• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.41 no.2
• /
• pp.189-202
• /
• 2002

Problem-centered learning reflects learning strategy based on constructivism. In this learning, students should find the solution in a small group discussion, and share their solutions with classmates in whole class discussion. So students participate in mathematics instruction actively and interact with other students about the strategies. We expect students would change their attitudes on mathematics and mathematical learning in these processes. In this study, we analyzed students' attitudes on mathematics and mathematical learning when they participated the problem-centered learning program. We found the change of students' attitudes to mathematics via problem-centered learning.

• School Mathematics
• /
• v.5 no.4
• /
• pp.441-457
• /
• 2003

The purpose of this paper is to compare affective characteristics of mathematically gifted children and average students, by analying self-tests of self-efficacy and attitudes about mathematics. we survey 109 children from Mathematically Gifted Education Institutes located in Busan, and students from 6 elementary schools, each two graded A, B, and C, where schools graded A and B refer to so-called schools with concurrent and general classes and C schools with, semi-special and special classes ones. Those schools are determined through the consideration of geographical, cultural, and environmental conditions of 48 elementary schools under Seobu Educational Office, Busan Metropolitan City. From each of the six schools, a 5th-grade class is selected. That is, 205 students from 6 classes are finally selected. Results of the study can be described as follows. First, mathematically gifted children score higher on whole attitudes about mathematics and interest, preference, and confidence in each subarea than children from schools whose location is classified as A, B, and C. Irrespective of genders, mathematically gifted children are scored higher in the whole attitudes about mathematics than children from schools classified as A, B, and C. Second, mathematically gifted children are higher in score for self-efficacy than children from schools graded A, B, and C. Regardless of gender, mathematically gifted children are scored higher in self-efficacy than other groups of children. But mathematically gifted children's score is not significantly higher than that of children form schools graded A.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
• /
• v.3 no.2
• /
• pp.111-122
• /
• 2000

This study is focused on vocational high school students who feel hardly interested in mathematics and are considered to have very limited basic scholastic ability. It analyzes the data obtained by applying the material, extracted from the Internet and literature to school classes from March to July, for the purposes of improving the degree of scholastic achievement on the basis of the fact that interest induced learning materials were developed and applied to the students to bring about their motivation resulting in a positive change in understanding and attitudes to mathematics. According to the result of the analysis, the level of students' scholastic ability of both the comparative class and the experimental class were too low to become interested in mathematics. However, the experimental class students seemed to feel familiar to the learning materials rather than reluctant, and it appeared that their interest and behavior of learning began to change gradually in an extent. In addition to that, as an aspect of scholastic achievement there was not considerable difference between the two classes, but as time went, some valuable changes were found. Unfortunately, the size of group of the research was small and the period of the experimental classes was not extensively long, and therefore the same result might not occur in other groups. However, it is believed that in class-time, educating students by putting in learning materials bringing about relevant motivation to the class, will lead them to become interested in mathematics, and change their attitudes and understanding of mathematics. After all, scholastic achievement will be effective.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.137-156
• /
• 2001

IEA's Third International Mathematics and Science Study(TIMSS) from 1994-1995 has placed Korea as one of the top three countries among 45 countries that participated in the study in mathematics achievement for the 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 8th grade students. While the test scores were excellent, the study also showed that mathematics education in Korea needed improvements in student attitudes, technology incorporation, and gender difference in achievement. An analysis of the a survey conducted as part of the mathematics curriculum research program showed that very little progress has been made in these areas for the past 5 years. Moreover, the progressively declining attitudes towards mathematics for high school students is a problematic phenomena for educators as we believe that mathematics is becoming even more important in an information technology based society. A comparison between the top three TIMSS scoring countries (Korea, Singapore, and Japan) and low scored country (U.S.) was made In this paper. We also compare some of problematic results from TIMSS to those from EERI Curriculum Study implemented in 2000. The study shows that simply using technology and improving student attitudes do not necessarily guarantee improved performance. Most of educators agree that potential for technology is great for both changing the way students learn and improving the attitudes of students. However, improperly implemented technology can hinder rather than help the educational process. Therefore, as we begin to implement and use more and moore technology, it is critical to develop the proper curriculum, training for teachers and research programs to track the progress and to make the necessary adjustments to provide the best possible education for our students. Another TIMSS result shows for all four grade levels(3rd, 4th, 7th, 8th), Korea shows the highest gender difference among all the participating countries. TIMSS data such as this is valuable to benchmark all types of information to get a better understanding about what is happening for improvements in math curriculum in Korea. More research needs to be done in comparing the performance of Korean mathematics education to understand both the strengths and weaknesses of our curriculum so that improvements can be made.

• Research in Mathematical Education
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.1-22
• /
• 2000

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of using graphing calculators on students' understanding of the linear and quadratic function concepts. The populators of this study are tenth graders at high school in Seoul, one class for the treatment group and another class for the comparison group, and experiment period is 14 weeks including two weeks for school regular exams.Function tests used in the study was proposed which described a conceptual knowledge of functions in terms of the following components: a) Conceptual understanding, b) Interpreting a function in terms of a verbal experission, c) Translating between different representations of functions, and d) Mathematical modeling a real-world situation using functions. Even though the group test means of the individual components of conceptual understanding, interpreting, translating, mathematical modeling did not differ significantly, there is evidence that the two groups differed in their performance on conceptual understanding. It was shown that students learned algebra using graphing calculators view graphs more globally. The attitude survey assessed students' attitudes and perceptions about the value of mathematics, the usefulness of graphs in mathematics, mathematical confidence, mathematics anxiety, and their feelings about calculators. The overall t-test was not statistically significant, but the students in the treatment group showed significantly different levels of anxiety toward mathematics.

• School Mathematics
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.751-774
• /
• 2017

Having mathematics for everyone in terms of students' mathematics achievement and attitudes toward mathematics is challenging in high school in South Korea. To gain such purpose, teachers are supposed to have a considerable amount of knowledge and develop mathematical and pedagogical reasoning and insight because equity can be fulfilled in mathematics classroom when any student share their ideas and have mathematical discussions. As a part of a large project aimed to develop and enact professional development for equity and examine its effects and, finally, to propose the direction of professional development to help students cognitively and affectively balanced grow in mathematics, the current study briefly introduces how such professional development was designed and implemented. This study reports its effect based on the statistical analysis of students' responses for the three different surveys, which are parts of the National Assessment of Educational Achievement study, TIMSS Advanced, and the survey about classroom interaction. The data collected in all students in school whose three mathematics teachers had participated in the professional development for two years. The findings consistently indicate the strong and impressive growths in students' attitudes toward mathematics, which are statistically significant. Furthermore, their attitudes toward mathematics are also related to interactions in a mathematics classroom. Based on such results, this study claims expansion of professional development for equity.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.171-193
• /
• 2009

Although Korea students have been showed the top academic achievement in the international evaluation test for mathematics academic achievement, they have the low confidence, low interest and unwelcome attention about mathematics. In order to change student's affective aspects about mathematics, we introduced the problem based learning(PBL) method which is based on constructivist learning theories. By applying PBL to the middle and high class students, we investigated the effect of PBL on the students' academic achievement and mathematical attitudes. The study shows that there are the statistically significant differences between a control group and a comparison group both in academic achievement and mathematical attitudes.