• School Mathematics
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.401-422
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• 2008

In the current school curriculum, an alternative assessment method which focuses more on the problem solving process rather than the final solution is being investigated. The goal is to evaluate students' understanding of the subject. A descriptive evaluation is being suggested as a way of examining the thought process of the students by a structured analysis of the problem solving process. But currently, there are not enough descriptive problems available for teachers to effectively carry out the alternative assessment method in the elementary school mathematics curriculum. In this research, we surveyed 197 elementary school teachers in Seoul to determine the status of descriptive evaluation in elementary school mathematics and to understand the teachers perception about the new assessment method. The goal of the survey was to find an effective implication of the new assessment method in elementary mathematics classes. The research showed that the elementary teachers use this assessment method about 4 to 7 times per month in their classes. They give descriptive problem test anytime they think it is appropriate during the Instruction of the topic. More than 90% of the teachers were using this assessment method to improve students' creativity and mathematical thinking. The teachers in the survey also commented that the teachers' administrative responsibility should be reduced and that the school environment in general should be improved for the new assessment method to be successful. Finally the study also showed that development of more descriptive problems in each grade level is needed to progress the new assessment method.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.433-457
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• 2022

An effective teacher community helps the participating teachers improve their instructional quality. This study reports a teacher community consisting of 15 elementary school teachers and one teacher educator. This paper analyzed 15 mathematics lessons in which the teachers implemented the five practices for orchestrating productive mathematics discussions by Smith and Stein (2018) based on the grade-specific discussions as well as the whole community's discussions. The results of this study showed that the overall levels of each practice either increased gradually or maintained at the highest Level 4, as mathematics lessons had been implemented. Specifically, the following practices were quite successful: setting goals for a lesson, selecting an appropriate task, anticipating student responses, and selecting student solutions. However, both sequencing and connecting student solutions were implemented at various levels. Monitoring student work tended to remain at Level 2 which included incorrect implementation of the practice. This paper closes with implications related to the skillful implementation of the five practices through a teacher community.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.313-328
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to understand the characteristics of the questions presented in shapes area and Measurement area of elementary mathematics textbooks. For this purpose, the types of questions presented in shapes area and measurement area of elementary mathematics textbooks and their working functions were comparatively analyzed by area and by grade cluster. As a result of the analysis, the number of questions per lesson increased sharply in the 3rd and 4th grade cluster compared to the 1st and 2nd grade cluster in both shapes area and measurement area. In these two areas, the most common reasoning questions are presented. It is presented relatively more in measurement area than in shapes area. There was a clear difference between the types of questions presented in shapes area and measurement area. In common with the two areas, questions mainly were acted as a function to help students learn to reason mathematically, a function to help students to determine whether something is mathematically correct, and a function to help students learn to conjecture, invent, and solve problem. The characteristics of the questions identified in this study can provide teaching/learning implications for the design and application of the questions suitable for the guidance of shapes area and measurement area, and can be used as a reference material when writing mathematics textbooks.

• 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.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.75-92
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• 2019

The 2015 revised mathematics curriculum encourages students to use graphs in newspapers and the Internet as materials when teaching graphs, and to experience a series of statistical problem-solving processes that collect, classify, organize, graph and interpret data. The graphs that the students learn through traditional textbooks were a single type of graphs. In particular, the graphs of the 5th and 6th grade groups were only increased in numbers, but the basic concepts were repeated in the 3rd and 4th grades. Fortunately, from the 2009 revision curriculum, it is possible to select the graph suitable for the situation while comparing the characteristics of some graphs. In most cases, the graphs used in the real world are presented in the form of a compounded infographics. The purpose of this study is to analyze and analyze the manifestations of information processing competence elements emphasized in the 2015 revised curriculum through the statistical project class using the informal graphic in the fifth grade of elementary school. And we suggested a concrete class plan.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.115-139
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• 2019

In problem solving education, sentence problems are a tool for comprehensive evaluation of mathematical ability. The sentence problems refer to the problem expressed in sentence form rather than simply a numerical representation of mathematical problems. In order to solve sentence problems with a mixture of mathematical terms and general language, problem-solving ability including the ability to understand the meaning of sentences as well as the mathematical computation ability is required. Therefore, it is important to analyze syntactic elements from the linguistic aspects in sentence problems. The purpose of this study is to investigate the complexity of sentence problems in the length of sentences and the grammatical complexity of the sentences in the depth of the sentences by analyzing the 51 sentence problems presented in the $4^{th}$ grade mathematics textbook(2015 revised curriculum). As a result, it was confirmed that it is necessary to examine the length and depth of the sentence more carefully in the teaching and learning of sentence problems. Especially in elementary mathematics, the sentence problems requires a linguistic understanding of the sentence, and therefore it is necessary to consider syntactic elements in the process of developing and teaching sentence problems in mathematics textbook.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.175-190
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• 2015

This study investigated the effect of team project activity for game making on the elementary mathematically gifted students' community care and organizational management capacity. 7 mathematically gifted students of 4th grade are selected and participated. After 15 hours activities during 2 months of team project on game making, their community care and organizational management capacity were improved. This results suggested that leadership education is possible in mathematics curriculum for mathematics gifted students.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.567-586
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to introduce the Knowledge Quartet (KQ) framework by which we can analyze teacher knowledge revealed in teaching mathematics. Specifically, this paper addressed how the KQ framework has been developed and employed in the context of research on teacher knowledge. In order to make the framework accessible, this paper analyzed an elementary school teacher's knowledge in teaching her fifth grade students how to figure out the area of a trapezoid using the four dimensions of the KQ (i.e., foundation, transformation, connection, and contingency). This paper is expected to provide mathematics educators with a basis of understanding the nature of teacher knowledge in teaching mathematics and to induce further detailed analyses of teacher knowledge using some dimensions of the KQ framework.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.391-415
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• 2011

Mathematics is to reflect on your or other people's psychological mathematic activities. Thus, learners need to reflect on their mathematical activities in order to cultivate mathematical thinking attitude and perceive learning contents. For this study, first of all, two classes of the fifth grade (29 students in experimental group and 31 students in control group) in 'Y' elementary school in Dae-gu city were selected as research targets and post-test of learning achievement and mathematical attitude examination were carried out in order to verify the differences of learning achievement and mathematical attitudes between experimental and control groups. The findings of this study mean that students' learning achievement and mathematical attitudes can be improved by applying mathematical reflective activities to the actual class.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.187-201
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of using process-based writing poems in the elementary mathematics classrooms. For this study, we chose 128 elementary school students to examine their mathematical achievements and attitude towards mathematics when using process-centered writing poems in the elementary mathematics classrooms. Process-based mathematics and writing programs developed mainly on the geometry units were composed of four levels, idea generation, idea selection, use and idea organization grouped into similar sections in order to separate into two sections. The results of the practice of this study's problem can be summarized as follows. First, the process-based mathematics and writing activity of geometry had a positive impact on academic achievement in mathematics. Although there was not a significant difference in the fourth and fifth grades, significant differences in the fifth and sixth grade were found. Second, in regards to attitudes in mathematics, process-based mathematics and writing activities had a positive impact. In particular, the improvement of mathematical attitudes was evident in all grades. It confirmed the effective facilitation of interest and enjoyment towards learning mathematics by 4th, 5th and 6th graders who had undertaken these mathematics classes.