• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.111-130
• /
• 2002

Major purposes of this stud? are to analyze Korean firms'innovation networks and sources of knowledge for innovation and to understand their spatial dimensions. In the innovation networks, parent firms are most important for subcontracting firms, while suppliers, customers and competitors are relatively important for independent firms. However, in the future innovation networks, it is expected that government-sponsored research institutions and university wilt become more important on the one hand, networks with foreign firms will become more important on the other hand. Regarding the process of innovation, distance does not matter for the acquisition of codified knowledge. Spatial proximity is, however, critical for the acquisition of tacit knowledge because discussions and researches in a research division within a firm, personal networks of CEO and workers who are responsible for innovation activity, and inter-firm relations with suppliers and customer in a region are regarded important as sources of tacit knowledge. Overall, the innovation networks are different between the Capital Region and non-Capital Region as well as between the industrial complex and non-industrial complex, suggesting that different regional innovation strategies and policies should be established and implemented by considering such regional specificities. Finally, based on the results of this study several policy implications are suggested.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.273-289
• /
• 2001

Given that the culture of the mathematics classroom has been perceived as an important topic in mathematics education research, this paper deals with the construct of sociomathematical norms which can be used as an analytical tool in understanding classroom mathematical culture. This paper first reviews the theoretical foundations of the construct such as symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology, and describes the actual classroom contexts in which social and sociomathematical norms were originally identified. This paper then provides a critical analysis of the previous studies with regard to sociomathematical norms. Whereas such studies analyze how sociomathematical norms become constituted and stabilized in the specific classroom contexts, they tend to briefly document sociomathematical norms mainly as a precursor to the detailed analysis of classroom mathematical practice. This paper reveals that the trend stems from the following two facts. First, the construct of sociomathematical norms evolved out of a classroom teaching experiment in which Cobb and his colleagues attempted to account for students' conceptual loaming as it occurred in the social context of an inquiry mathematics classroom. Second, the researchers' main role was to design instructional devices and sequences of specific mathematical content and to support the classroom teacher to foster students' mathematical learning using those sequences Given the limitations in terms of the utility of sociomathematical norms, this paper suggests the possibility of positioning the sociomathematical norms construct as more centrally reflecting the quality of students' mathematical engagement in collective classroom processes and predicting their conceptual teaming opportunities. This notion reflects the fact that the construct of sociomathematical norms is intended to capture the essence of the mathematical microculture established in a classroom community rather than its general social structure. The notion also allows us to see a teacher as promoting sociomathematical norms to the extent that she or he attends to concordance between the social processes of the classroom, and the characteristically mathematical ways of engaging. In this way, the construct of sociomathematical norms include, but in no ways needs to be limited to, teacher's mediation of mathematics discussions.