• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.247-265
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to analyze the essence of ratio concept from educational viewpoint. For this purpose, it was tried to examine contents and organizations of the recent teaching of ratio concept in elementary school text of Korea from ‘Syllabus Period’ to ‘the 7th Curriculum Period’ In these text most ratio problems were numerically and algorithmically approached. So the Wiskobas programme was introduced, in which the focal point was not on mathematics as a closed system but on the activity, on the process of mathematization and the subject ‘ratio’ was assigned an important place. There are some educational implications of this study which needs to be mentioned. First, the programme for developing proportional reasoning should be introduced early Many students have a substantial amount of prior knowledge of proportional reasoning. Second, conventional symbol and algorithmic method should be introduced after students have had the opportunity to go through many experiences in intuitive and conceptual way. Third, context problems and real-life situations should be required both to constitute and to apply ratio concept. While working on contort problems the students can develop proportional reasoning and understanding. Fourth, In order to assist student's learning process of ratio concept, visual models have to recommend to use.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.309-327
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• 2018

This study is a case study of an elementary school teacher's reflection and practice in the process of planning, executing and criticizing his lesson on division with decimals. The purpose of this study was to clarify what kinds of problems an elementary school teacher was thinking about and how his focus was changing in the process of planning and executing a lesson and criticizing his lesson with his peers. The teacher was set in three periods: a teacher planning a lesson, a teacher executing a lesson, and a teacher criticizing his or her own lesson. Each period was analyzed in eight aspects: Establishing the goals for mathematics, implementing tasks, connecting mathematical representations, facilitating mathematical discourse, posing questions, building procedural fluency from conceptual understanding, supporting productive struggles, and using evidences of students' thinking.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.531-546
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• 2017

This study explores the basis for determining priority among the four arithmetical operations in order to provide useful pedagogical content knowledge for teaching the order of operations. The study also discusses the perspective for viewing the order of operations. It presents the following five suggestions based on the results of the discussion. First, teachers should be made to realize that the same result can be obtained on calculation even when subtraction and division are performed first in mixed operations of addition and subtraction and mixed operations of multiplication and division. Second, teachers should understand why the rule of calculating sequentially from the left side of an equation has become customary. Third, teachers should be offered an explanation for the driver of the rule setting that multiplication takes precedence over addition in mixed operations of multiplication and addition. Fourth, the significance of the quantity within parenthesis must be emphasized to teachers. Fifth, teachers must gain an in-depth understanding about the order of operations by getting a description of all the customary and conceptual perspectives on the order of operations when describing the same in the teacher's guide.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.223-237
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• 2019

There is a close interaction between the linguistic-syntactic representation system and the affective representation system that appear in the mathematical process. On the other hand, since the mathematical conceptual system is fundamentally metaphoric, the analysis of the mathematical concept structure through linguistic representation can help to identify the source of cognitive and affective obstacles that interfere with mathematics learning. In this study, we analyzed the problem-solving protocols of mathematical gifted children from the perspective of cognitive language and meta-affect to identify the relationship between the functional characteristics of the text and metaphor they use and the functional characteristics of meta-affect. As a result, the behavior of the cognitive and affective characteristics of mathematically gifted children differed according to the success of problem solving. In the case of unsuccessful problem-solving, the use of metaphor as an internal representation system was relatively more frequent than in the successful case. In addition, while the cognitive linguistic aspects of metaphors play an important role in problem-solving, meta-affective attributes are closely related to the external representation of metaphors.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.367-381
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• 2019

This investigation engaged elementary and middle school pre-service teachers in a task of modeling and explaining the magnitude of $0.14m^2$ and examined their responses. The study analyzed both successful and unsuccessful responses in order to reflect on the patterns of misconceptions relative to pre-service teachers' prior knowledge. The findings suggest a need to promote opportunities for pre-service teachers to make connections between different domains through meaningful tasks, to reason abstractly and quantitatively, to use proper language, and to refine conceptual understanding. While mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) could use such mathematical tasks to identify the mathematical content needs of pre-service teachers, MTEs generally use instructional time to connect content and pedagogy. More importantly, an early and consistent exposure to a combined experience of mathematics and pedagogy that connects and deepens key concepts in the program's curriculum is critical in defining the important content knowledge for K-8 mathematics teachers.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.283-308
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• 2018

'Divisor and multiple' is the topic included both in the elementary and in the secondary mathematics curriculum, but there has been lack of research on it. It has been reported that students have a difficulty in understanding the meaning of the greatest common divisor (GCD) and the least common multiple (LCM), while they can find out GCD and LCM. Against the lack of research on how to overcome this difficulty, this study designed teaching methods with a model for visualization to emphasize the meanings of divisor and multiple in finding out GCD and LCM, and implemented the methods in one fourth grade classroom. A questionnaire was developed to explore students' solution methods and interviews with focused students were implemented. In addition, fourth-grade students' thinking was compared and contrasted with fifth-grade students who studied divisor and multiple with the current textbook. The results of this study showed that the teaching methods with a specific model for visualization had a positive impact on students' conceptual understanding of the process to find out GCD and LCM. As such, this study provides instructional implications on how to foster the meanings of finding out GCD and LCM at the elementary school.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-29
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• 2014

When taught the precise definition of ${\pi}$, students may be simply asked to memorize its approximate value without developing a rigorous understanding of the underlying reason of why it is a constant. Measuring the circumferences and diameters of various circles and calculating their ratios might just represent an attempt to verify that ${\pi}$ has an approximate value of 3.14, and will not necessarily result in an adequate understanding about the constant nor formally proves that it is a constant. In this study, we aim to investigate prospective teachers' conceptual understanding of ${\pi}$, and as a constant and whether they can provide a proof of its constant property. The findings show that prospective teachers lack a holistic understanding of the constant nature of ${\pi}$, and reveal how they teach students about this property in an inappropriate approach through a proving activity. We conclude our findings with a suggestion on how to improve the situation.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.507-516
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• 2007

Multinomial logistic regression is probably the most popular representative of probabilistic discriminative classifiers for multiclass classification problems. In this paper, a kernel variant of multinomial logistic regression is proposed by combining a Newton's method with a bound optimization approach. This formulation allows us to apply highly efficient approximation methods that effectively overcomes conceptual and numerical problems of standard multiclass kernel classifiers. We also provide the approximate cross validation (ACV) method for choosing the hyperparameters which affect the performance of the proposed approach. Experimental results are then presented to indicate the performance of the proposed procedure.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.135-152
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• 2019

This conceptual paper proposes a conceptualization regarding teacher candidates' experiences as learners during instructional activities implemented by teacher educators in practice-based teacher education programs. We argue that the current learning cycle framework for teacher candidates to engage in core teaching practices does not fully address teacher candidates' own learning experiences as learners. To provide a rationale for our proposal, we examine the current conceptualization of learning to enact core practices and suggest the need for integrating teacher candidates' experiences into the current conceptualization. We also draw on research on figured worlds as an effort to conceptualize teacher candidates' experiences coming from multiple figured world. We present some examples from our own mathematics methods courses to illustrate how this newly proposed framework can be used in practice and share remaining questions for future research.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-27
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• 2021

For elementary school children, learning the standard multiplication algorithm with accuracy, clarity, consistency, and efficiency is a daunting task. Nonetheless, what should be our expectation in procedural fluency, for example, in finding the product of 25 and 37 among fifth grade students? Collectively, has the mathematics education community emphasized the value of conceptual understanding to the detriment of procedural fluency? In addition to examining these questions, we survey multiplication algorithms throughout history and in textbooks and reconceptualize the standard multiplication algorithm by using a new tool called the Multiplication Aid Template.