• The Mathematical Education
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.253-263
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• 2001

Developing mathematical thinking skills is one of the most important goals of school mathematics. In particular, recent performance based on assessment has focused on the teaching and learning environment in school, emphasizing student's self construction of their learning and its process. Because of this reason, people related to mathematics education including math teachers are taught to recognize the fact that the degree of students'acquisition of mathematical thinking skills and strategies(for example, inductive and deductive thinking, critical thinking, creative thinking) should be estimated formally in math class. However, due to the lack of an evaluation tool for estimating the degree of their thinking skills, efforts at evaluating student's degree of mathematics thinking skills and strategy acquisition failed. Therefore, in this paper, mathematical thinking was studied, and using the results of study as the fundamental basis, mathematical thinking process model was developed according to three types of mathematical thinking - fundamental thinking skill, developing thinking skill, and advanced thinking strategies. Finally, based on the model, evaluation factors related to essential thinking skills such as analogy, deductive thinking, generalization, creative thinking requested in the situation of solving mathematical problems were developed.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.291-307
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• 2013

Piaget's revolutionary study on the cognitive development of children has focused on the development of logic. Logical operations and a variety of classifications based on the set of accepted rules involve convergent thinking. Children and adults have logical and creative thinking which deal with a reality of thinking. This study aims to examine a cognitive structure of students, which is closely related to the Piaget's cognitive development theories of students when creative thinking. Students were given an open mathematical problem and were expected to be able to take advantage of sensitivity, fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration which can be seen as clearly of their structure cognitive.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.647-672
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• 2003

This study sought to determine the impact of the graphing calculator on prospective math-teachers' mathematical thinking while they engaged in the exploratory tasks. To understand students' thinking processes, two groups of three students enrolled in the college of education program participated in the study and their performances were audio-taped and described in the observers' notebooks. The results indicated that the prospective teachers got the clues in recalling the prior memory, adapting the algebraic knowledge to given problems, and finding the patterns related to data, to solve the tasks based on inductive, deductive, and creative thinking. The graphing calculator amplified the speed and accuracy of problem-solving strategies and resulted partly in students' progress to the creative thinking by their concept development.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.5-12
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• 2009

Mathematical creativity is the most important factor for the advancement of mathematics. Only creative mind can produce creative results. But not much research work has been done in this direction. The present author has taken a scheme of developing a mathematical creativity test to identify creative children in mathematics and to find the relationships of psychoticism, neuroticism, intelligence, ability to achieve in mathematics and general creativity with mathematical creativity and their composite effect on it over a population of Bengali medium school students. In this approach, Bengali adaptation of English version of the "Verbal Test of Creative Thinking" by Mehdi [Mehdi, B. (1985). Manual of verbal test of creative thinking (revised edition). Agra, India: National Psychological Corporation.] has been completed. Works of adapting intelligence test, developing mathematical creativity test, adapting personality test in Bengali are in process. Relationships are to be found later.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.69-89
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• 1998

The purpose of this study is to develop a test which can be used in identification of the gifted students in the area of mathematics. This study was carried out for two years from 1996. Mathematical giftedness is, in this study, regarded as a result of interaction of mathematical thinking ability, mathematical creativity, mathematical task committment, background knowledge. This study presumed that mathematical thinking ability is composed of seven thinking abilities: intuitive insights, ability for information organization, ability for visualization, ability for mathematical abstraction, inferential thinking ability(both inductive and deductive thinking abilities), generalization and application ability, and reflective thinking. This study also presupposed that mathematical creativity is composed of 3 characteristics: fluency, flexibility, originality. The test for mathematical creative problem solving ability was developed for primary, middle, and high school students. The test is composed of two parts: the first part is concentrated more on divergent thinking, while the second part is more on convergent thinking. The major targets of the test were the students whose achievement level in mathematics belong to top 15~20% in each school. The goodness of the test was examined in the aspects of reliability, validity, difficulty, and discrimination power. Cronbach $\alpha$ was in the range of .60~.75, suggesting that the test is fairly reliable. The validity of the test was examined through the correlation among the test results for mathematical creative problem solving ability, I. Q., and academic achievement scores in mathematics and through the correlation between the scores in the first part and the scores in the second part of the test for mathematical creative problem solving ability. The test was found to be very difficult for the subjects. However, the discrimination power of the test was at the acceptable level.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2016

This study aims to design an exemplification task to facilitate the students' creative thinking, and to investigate mathematical creativity which emerges from exemplification. In particular, we aim to identify the ways to design exemplification tasks which encourage creative thinking, and characterize mathematical creativity fostered by exemplification. The findings showed that the students' creative thinking related to fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality emerged through exemplification.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.399-404
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• 2004

Mathematical creativity is a main topic which is studied within mathematics education. Also it is important in learning school mathematics. It can be important for mathematics teachers to view mathematical creativity as an disposition toward mathematical activity that can be fostered broadly in the general classroom environment. In this article, it is discussed that creativity-enriched mathematics instruction which includes creative problem-solving and problem-posing tasks and activities can be guided more creative approaches to school mathematics via routine problems.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.309-330
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• 2009

The article aims to present findings of a study which has examined the ability of elementary school mathematics teachers and of teacher-trainees in other disciplines to solve irregular challenging problems of sequences in general rather than numerical sequences only. The findings show that mathematics teachers succeed to cope with unusual assignments when the requirements of the problems presented to them are analogous to irregular problems. However, when the problems require a change in the thinking procedure in the direction of creative thinking, there is a considerable decrease in performance. Another finding shows that, although teacher-trainees succeed less in solving the presented problems, they give incorrect solutions which do indicate creative thinking. An inevitable conclusion based on the research findings is that teacher training institutions should enhance and reinforce multi-directional. branching out and creative thinking competences.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.717-746
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• 2014

The study aimed to explore how to improve mathematical thinking through metacognitive learning by stressing metacognitive abilities as a core strategy to increase mathematical creativity and problem-solving abilities. Theoretical exploration was followed by an analysis of correlations between metacognitive abilities and various ways of mathematical thinking. Various metacognitive teaching and learning methods used by many teachers at school were integrated for sharing. Also, the methods of learning application and assessment of metacognitive thinking were explored. The results are as follows: First, metacognitive abilities were positively related to 'reasoning, communication, creative problem solving and commitment' with direct and indirect effects on mathematical thinking. Second, various megacognitive ability-applied teaching and learning methods had positive impacts on definitive areas such as 'anxiety over Mathematics, self-efficacy, learning habit, interest, confidence and trust' as well as cognitive areas such as 'learning performance, reasoning, problem solving, metacognitive ability, communication and expression', which is a result applicable to top, middle and low-performance students at primary and secondary education facilities. Third, 'metacognitive activities, metaproblem-solving process, personal strength and weakness management project, metacognitive notes, observation tables and metacognitive checklists' for metacognitive learning were suggested as alternatives to performance assessment covering problem-solving and thinking processes. Various metacognitive learning methods helped to improve creative and systemic problem solving and increase mathematical thinking. They did not only imitate uniform problem-solving methods suggested by a teacher but also induced direct experiences of mathematical thinking as well as adjustment and control of the thinking process. The study will help teachers recognize the importance of metacognition, devise and apply teaching or learning models for their teaching environments, improving students' metacognitive ability as well as mathematical and creative thinking.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.51-65
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• 2010

Open-ended problems can foster deeper understanding of mathematical ideas, generating creative thinking and communication in students. High-order thinking tasks such as open-ended problems involve more ambiguity and higher level of personal risks for students than they are normally exposed to in routine problems. To explore the classroom-based factors that could support or inhibit such higher-order processes, this paper also describes two cases of Singapore primary school teachers who have successfully or unsuccessfully implemented an open-ended problem in their mathematics lessons.