• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.91-101
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• 2001

Nowadays the number of students that is losing their interest as well as learning desire in mathematics is increasing because of lack of logical thought creative power and abstract expression that present-day mathematics requires by reason of discrepancy of extreme scholastic ability by speciality of mathematics. In these conditions, we reduce the number of learning depression by bringing about learning desire or learning interest on mathematics, and students learn effective learning methods to be voluntary learning of discovery themselves that studies basic concepts, principles, rules through logical thought of students to solve difference of scholastic ability, thus we assumed that debate studies through small group activities in ability group would be one of ways to improve learning power, so the results of our research are as follows; 1. Debate studies through small group activities were very effective because of reinforcing the achivement level of students. 2. By this learning method, an individual or cooperrative learning was fostered, and lively discussions were accomplished. And learning attitudes of students were changed by the extension of cooperative learning abilities through advices or by themselves. 3. A personal opinion is payed regard by accepting an individual idea in the process of making questions. Learners can correct wrong concepts in the process of correcting wrong answers. So if we apply above-mentioned studies with easy contents from the lower grades, the effectiveness would increase as learners go to the higher grade. According to the results of various researches as follows; "The teaching-learning method oriented coopperative debate studies is effective to find solutions to mathematical problems." If small group activities are applied in the educational situation to search the course of a desirable cooperation learning through small group activities to improve scholastic abilities for a discoverable problem-solving power. I think that the teaching-learning method oriented cooperative debate studies is one of the most desirable methods to increase the problem-solving ability.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.493-511
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• 2009

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the characteristic methods of Mathematics Education. However, it is not simple to find the proper research method of Mathematics Education since Mathematics Education deals with the practice of teaching and learning mathematics, as well as the topics of scholarly research on the practice. Issues on Mathematics Education might vary with the epidemical aspects, which are basic attitudes toward the knowledge and understanding about Mathematics. Thus, this thesis will discuss two questions: First, What are the distinguishing characteristics of Mathematics Education as a field of study, when compared with ones of mathematics? Second, What are the characteristic methods of Mathematics Education, when compared with ones of other academic fields? For solving those questions, this thesis starts from meanings of science and education. And it also classifies Mathematics as formal science whereas Mathematics Education as social science by showing differences between Mathematics and Mathematics Education: research subject of Mathematics targets on mathematics itself and it uses the deductive method. On the other hand, Mathematics Education research handles the practice of mathematics of students and uses plausible reasoning. Also, it will also show why Mathematics Education shares lots of aspects with social science, not with natural science, which has many different characteristics from those of social science. Many researchers have agreed that Education should be categorized into the social science but misplaced Mathematics Education and Science Education into the natural science. It is true that physics and chemistry are natural science. And also it should be said that pure science is formal science. But it should be considered that just like Education, Mathematics Education and Science Education are in the category of social science.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.476-488
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• 2016

The purposes of this study were to develop a scientific inquiry-based STEAM education program and to investigate its effect on changing middle school students' self-efficacy in science, job awareness, and attitudes toward STEM. A scientific inquiry-based STEAM program was developed with the theme of 'earthquakes', using the ADBA model, which was taking up the total of six class periods. The final program, which had been revised and completed after being pre-tested with middle school students, was implemented to 105 third-graders of middle school in a metropolitan city. One sample pre-post paired t-test before and after applying the program to the same group was conducted, and its effectiveness was analyzed in terms of self-efficacy in science, job awareness, attitudes toward science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Results showed that the STEAM program on the theme of 'earthquakes' demonstrated its effect on improving the students' of self-efficacy in science subject and their awareness of science-related jobs. Furthermore, this program indicated a statistical significance in improving middle school students' attitudes, awareness, and abilities, values, and continuing interest towards science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Therefore, we suggest that this scientific inquiry based STEAM program be used to help students to improve their scientific investigation skills as well as their creative and integrated thinking abilities in schools.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.197-219
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• 2008

Unlike ordinary situations, deifinitions play a very important role in mathematics education in schools. Mathematical concepts have been mainly acquired by given definitions. However, according to didactical intentions, mathematics education in schools has employed mathematical concepts and definitions with less strict forms than those in pure mathematics. This research mainly discusses definitions used in geometry (promising) course in primary schools to cope with possibilities of creating misconception due to this didactical transformation. After analyzing problems with potential misconceptions, a survey was conducted $\underline{with}$ 80 primary school teachers in Jeju to investigate their recognitions in meaning of mathematical concepts in geometry and attitudes toward teaching. Most of the respondents answered they taught their students while they knew well about mathematical definitions in geometry but the respondents sometimes confused mathematical concepts of polygons and circles. Also, they were aware of problems in current mathematics textbooks which have explained figures in small topics (classes). Here, several suggestions are proposed as follows from analyzing teachers' recognitions and researches in mathematical viewpoints of definitions (promising) in geometric figures which have been adopted by current mathematics textbooks in primary schools from the seventh educational curriculum. First, when primary school students in their detailed operational stage studying figures, they tend to experience $\underline{a}$ collision between concept images acquired from activities to find out promising and concept images formed through promising. Therefore, a teaching method is required to lessen possibility of misconceptions. That is, there should be a communication method between defining conceptual definitions and Images. Second, we need to consider how geometric figures and their elements in primary school textbooks are connected with fundamental terminologies laying the foundation for geometrical definitions and more logical approaches should be adopted. Third, the consistency with studying geometric figures should be considered. Fourth, sorting activities about problems in coined words related to figures and way and time of their introductions should be emphasized. In primary schools mathematics curriculum, geometry has played a crucial role in increasing mathematical ways of thoughts. Hence, being introduced by parts from viewpoints of relational understanding should be emphasized more in textbooks and teachers should teach students after restructuring this. Mathematics teachers should help their students not only learn conceptual definitions of geometric figures in their courses well but also advance to rigid mathematical definitions. Therefore, that's why mathematics teachers should know meanings of concepts clearly and accurately.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.789-806
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• 2010

As calls for more attention toward social minority group increases in our society recently, in the field of mathematics education more attention toward an issue about mathematics underachievers is being amplified. Thus, the present study is to examine the effects of teaching method considering students' cognitive characteristics on mathematical underachievers' problem solving and mathematical disposition. For this study, 10 fifth graders identified as mathematical underachievers based on the results of the national level diagnosis assessment and school based assessment were voluntarily selected from an elementary school in Seoul. The results of this study found out the fact that students participating in this program improved in terms of an ability both to solve problems in various ways and to explain an process of problem solving using spoken or written language and drawings. In addition, learning environment respecting students' own mathematical ideas seems to positively influence students' attitudes toward mathematics learning and mathematical dispositions. Furthermore, this study pointed out that mathematical underachievers tend to have difficulty in expressing their own mathematical thinking by reason of linguistic limitation. Finally, the findings of this study imply that for effective teaching of mathematics underachievers, these students' own informal experience and knowledge about mathematics as well as their characteristics regarding learning difficulties should be strongly considered.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.251-260
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• 1997

The instructional influences of cooperative learning strategies, which emphasize mutual interdependency of learners, group goal, and individual accountability, upon students' achievement, the attitude toward science instruction and the perception of learning environment were investigated. Before instruction, the prior knowledge test about atoms and molecules, the test of attitudes toward science instruction, and the perception questionnaire of learning environment were administered, and the grade in the previous mathematics course was obtained. These scores were used as covariates. Mid-term examination score was used as blocking variable. For instruction, three different strategies-traditional individual learning, small group learning, and cooperative learning-were used and teaching materials for the units of mole and stoichiometry were also prepared. After instruction, the researcher-made achievement test, the test of attitudes toward science instruction, and the perception questionnaire of learning environment were administered. The perception questionnaire of group activities was also administered to the two treatment groups. In the quantitative subtest, the scores of cooperative learning group and small group learning group were significantly higher than those of traditional individual learning group. However, the cooperative learning group's scores in the achievement test and the qualitative subtest were significantly higher than those of small group learning group and traditional individual learning group. The students in the cooperative learning group were found to have the most positive perception of learning environment but to have similar attitudes toward science instruction. No interaction between the treatment and the level of the previous achievement was found in any of the analyses. In the perception questionnaire of group activities, students in both small group learning group and cooperative learning group exhibited positive perception of group activities. However, students in the cooperative learning group tended to think that their activities were related with their group's success. Educational implications are discussed.

• School Mathematics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.101-120
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• 2013

International comparative studies of students' performance in mathematics have shown that Korean students possess very negative attitudes toward mathematics, while they are ranked as one of the highest in the cognitive achievement of mathematics. This has prompted mathematics educators to seek for a way to improve the quality of mathematics education. In this context, this research has been conducted to investigate the learning style of Korean middle school students under the assumption that it is of essence to understand the characteristics of our students as mathematics learners. For the purpose, in-depth interview had been conducted and sixteen middle students participated in the interview. The students were chosen to represent the average group of their age-cohorts based on their performance in mathematics and their SES. The interview was designed as a semi-structured clinical interview. In the interview, the students were given mathematical tasks dealing with central themes in the domain of function. Each student was given about 30 to 50 minutes to solve the tasks. After an interviewee finished the tasks, s/he was asked to explained how s/he solved the tasks. The researchers asked additional questions to clarify the students' understanding of the mathematical themes in the tasks and to identify their strategies for learning mathematics. The analysis of the in-depth interview has primarily identified the characteristics of the students' understanding of the main themes in function and then has been extended to investigate their characteristic styles for learning mathematics. The analysis of the interview identified the learning styles of the students as 'inductive learning based on prototypical cases', 'repeated practice of exemplar mathematics problems', 'disengaged learning', and 'double standards in learning mathematics'. Based on the results of the analysis, this research presents the implications for the improvement of mathematics education.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.586-594
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• 2022

Objectives: This study investigated the effectiveness of the social marketing mix approach in increasing students' knowledge about smoking, promoting positive attitudes toward smoking cessation, and decreasing smoking behavior. Methods: This quantitative research study incorporated a quasi-experimental method with a pretest-posttest non-equivalent group design. Using the purposive sampling technique, 152 smoking students were selected as participants. They were divided into 2 equal groups, with 76 students in the control group and 76 in the intervention group. The data were collected using questionnaires and analyzed with the chi-square test, independent t-test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and Mann-Whitney U-test. Results: The social marketing mix intervention was effective in increasing the students' knowledge about smoking (p<0.001), improving their attitude toward smoking cessation (p<0.001), and reducing their smoking behavior (p=0.014). Conclusions: This approach should be implemented by local governments to reduce smoking behavior in the community, especially among teenagers, in addition to instituting a smoking ban and applying fines.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.247-266
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• 2018

In this paper, three main concepts are chosen for this statistical estimation study, based on previous studies: confidence interval and reliability, sampling distribution of mean and population mean estimation, and relationships between elements of confidence interval. The main objectives of this study are as follows: 1. How are the attitudes that future math teachers and high school students have to ward the statistical estimation? 2. Is there some difference in the awareness of misconceptions about the statistical estimation that future math teachers and high school students have? A study result shows that both groups have difficulties in understanding statistical concepts and their meaning used in Unit Statistical Estimation. They tend to wrongly think that the meaning of reliability is the same as that of probability. They also have difficulties in understanding sample variance in the sampling distribution of mean, which makes it impossible to connect with population mean estimation. It is shown that relationships between elements consisting of confidence interval are not consistent.

• School Mathematics
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.77-95
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• 2003

We have web-based online discussion to implement active interaction and a variety of communicative activities. I have gathered the following research questions to study about the meaning of web-based online discussion as a mathematical communication teaching method. First, what changes are there in students mathematical communication ability in web-based online discussion\ulcorner Second, how do students evaluate the web-based online discussion experience\ulcorner In this web-based online discussion, groups of middle school first grade 34 students and each group had chatting at 8 times for 10 weeks. I analyzed what they had discussed by the prints that they had sent me by e-mail. I also surveyed what they had experienced and analyzed them. In this research, the online web based discussion has given positive influence on students' competence of speaking, writing, reading and listening which are crucial to mathematical communication. Students' mathematic thinking power improved and attitudes to mathematics have become more positive.