• Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology & Nutrition
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.346-356
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• 2021

Purpose: Campylobacter species are currently the most common cause of bacterial gastroenteritis. In Lebanon, Campylobacter infection occurrence is underdiagnosed owing to the lack of specific culture and rapid test kits, particularly among children. This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence, laboratory findings, and clinical characteristics of Campylobacter infection in hospitalized children with acute gastroenteritis in South Lebanon. Methods: We conducted a 6-month retrospective cohort study between January and June 2018, including 291 children aged between 1 month and 12 years, who were admitted to a tertiary healthcare center in South Lebanon. The medical files of the patients were reviewed to retrieve the required clinical information, including clinical and laboratory data. Results: The prevalence of campylobacteriosis agents in pediatric patients with acute gastroenteritis is 12.02%. Patients infected with Campylobacter had more severe acute gastroenteritis than Campylobacter-negative patients and often presented with high-grade fever, diarrhea episodes more than six times per day, diarrhea lasting for more than five days, and dehydration. Indeed, children with high-grade fever (≥38.5℃) were five times more likely to test positive for Campylobacter than those with low-grade fever. In addition, the results showed a higher Vesikari score for the majority of Campylobacter-positive patients with severe acute gastroenteritis compared to a moderate profile for Campylobacter-negative patients. Conclusion: The present study findings highlight that Campylobacter infection is frequent among children with acute gastroenteritis. Therefore, the detection of Campylobacter should be carried out for the diagnosis of human gastroenteritis in Lebanon, along with the detection of routine enteropathogens.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.93-107
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• 1992

The purpose of this study is to make out teaching-learning method for developing mathematical abilities of the 1st grade children in elementary school by investigating cognitive effects which mathematical pre-experiences given intentionally by teachers have on children's learning mathematics. The research questions for this purpose are as follows: In learning effects through mathematical pre-experiences given intentionally by teachers. 1) is there any differences between children with pre-experiences and children without them in Mathematics Achievement Test\ulcorner 2) is there any differences between children with pre-experiences and children without them in Transfer Test for learning effects\ulcorner For this study, a class with 41 children in H elementary school located in a Myon near Chong-ju was selected as an experimental group and a class with 43 children in G elementary school in the same Myon was selected as a control group. Nonequivalent Control Group Design of Quasi-Experimental Design was applied to this study. To give pre-experiences to the children in experimental group, their classroom was equipped with materials for pre-experiences, so children could always observe the materials and play with them. The materials were a round-clock on the wall, two pairs of scales, fifty dice, some small pebbles, two pairs of weight scales, two rulers on the wall, and various cards for playing games. Pre-experiences were given to the children repeatedly through games and observations during free time in the morning (00:20-09:00) and intervals between periods. There was a pretest for homogeneity of mathematics achievement between the two groups and were Mathematics Achievement Test (30 items) and Transfer Test (25 items) for learning effects as post-tests. The data were collected from the pretest on April 8 (control group), on April 11 (experimental group) and from the Mathematics Achievement Test and Transfer Test on July 15 (experimental group) and on July 16 (control group). T-test was used to analyze if there were any differences in the results of the test. The results of the analysis were as follows: (1) As the result of pretest, there was not a significance difference between the experimental group (M=17.10. SD=7.465) and the control group (M=16.31, SD=6.974) at p<.05 (p=0.632). (2) For the question 1. in the Mathematics Achievement Test, there was a significant difference between the experimental group (M=26.08, SD=4.827) and the control group (M=22.28. SD=5.913) at p<.01 (p=.003). (3) For the question 2. in the Transfer Test for learning effects. there was a significant difference between the experimental group (M=16.41, SD=5.800) and the control group (M=11.84, SD=4.815) at p<001, (p=.000). From the results of the analyses obtained in this study. the following conclusions can be drawn: First, mathematical pre-experiences given by teachers are effective in increasing mathematical achievement and transfer in learning mathematics. Second, games. observations, and experiments given intentionally by teachers can make children's mathematical experiences rich and various, and are effective in adjusting individual differences for the mathematical experiences obtained before they entered elementary schools. Third, it is necessary for teachers to give mathematical pre-experiences with close attention in order to stimulate children's mathematical interests and intellectual curiosity.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.205-230
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is, targeting 5th and 6th grades mathematically gifted elementary students, to analyze the effect of independent study project learning on self-directed learning ability and mathematical self-efficacy, and based on the results, examine the implications that independent study project learning has in special education for the gifted. In order to solve the study problems, 5th grade mathematically gifted elementary students(40) and 6th grade mathematically gifted elementary students(39) who had passed the selection criteria of D education institute for the gifted and had been receiving special education for the gifted were selected. The study results are as below. First, although self-directed learning ability had no significant difference at p<0.05, it statistically had some differences in averages between pre-test and post-test results. Second, although mathematical self-efficacy had no significant difference at p<0.05, it statistically had some differences in averages between pre-test and post-test results. Third, in the aspects of self-directed learning ability and mathematical self-efficacy, independent study project learning had a more positive effect on 5th grade mathematically gifted elementary students than 6th grade mathematically gifted elementary students. In addition, it had significant differences in 'the level of mathematical tasks', a sub-level of mathematical self-efficacy, and 'the openness of learning', 'the initiative of learning', and 'a sense of responsibility for learning', sub-levels of self-directed learning ability. These results imply that independent study project learning has a positive effect on self-directed learning ability and mathematical self-efficacy of mathematically gifted elementary students so that it could be meaningfully used as a teaching method for special education for the gifted at educational sites of independent study project learning.

• School Mathematics
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.447-466
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• 2007

Math education in schools have to enable students to understand the importance of math and nurture the capacity to resolve various problems in daily life with reasoning, which is therefore, always applicable to the actual world. Proportional reasoning capacity is being often used in daily life, and some kind of unit is not fixed. So students are considering it very difficult. This study looks into the difficulties that students have in proportional reasoning, what kind of problem solving strategy is being used, what the problems are in current textbooks, etc. Based on this, it tried to check the concept changes in students' proportional reasoning by developing the instruction program for 'proportional expression' unit in the 6th grade. Based on the results, this study analyzes the features of proportional reasoning instruction programs and the instruction results. Also it analyzes in-advance & after examination papers of the experimental class and comparison class to contribute to the instruction method and instruction contents improvement of 'proportional expression' unit.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.81-98
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• 2009

This study analyzed the types of quantitative reasoning and the characteristics of representation in order to figure out the characteristics of quantitative reasoning of the sixth graders. Three students who used quantitative reasoning in solving problems were interviewed in depth. Results showed that the three students used two types of quantitative reasoning, that is difference reasoning and multiplicative reasoning. They used qualitatively different quantitative reasoning, which had a great impact on their problem-solving strategy. Students used symbolic, linguistic and visual representations. Particularly, they used visual representations to represent quantities and relations between quantities included in the problem situation, and to deduce a new relation between quantities. This result implies that visual representation plays a prominent role in quantitative reasoning. This paper included several implications on quantitative reasoning and quantitative approach related to early algebra education.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.177-196
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to find out whether Achievement Tests are fully performing their role as an objective standard that measures student's educational achievement level by analysing the content validity of Achievement Tests developed by KICE and teachers at elementary school. In the study, the content validity of achievement tests were analyzed in the behavioral content objective dimensions. 60 instructional objectives from the Unit one to the Unit six contained in the teachers' guidebook for the elementary third-grade Math subject were analyzed into dimensions of behavior and content. And the Achievement Test developed by KICE and teachers in five elementary schools randomly chosen were collected and analyzed. Then, differences of the proportion between instructional objectives and evaluative objectives in each dimension statistically were verified. The results of the study are as follows : 1. In the dimension of behavior, as analysing and comparing the content validity of achievement tests, there was no significant difference in all domains(knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation). (p<.05) Therefore, it could be concluded that content validity of the Achievement Test is very high. 2. In the dimension of content, similarly there is no significant difference in all domains between achievement tests by both KICE and teachers. (p<.05) Therefore, the content validity of all tests are very high. In conclusion, it could be concluded that content validity of achievement tests is considerably high in content and behavior dimension. The study suggest the followings : 1. By expanding to the other subjects, there are needs to analyze and verify the content validity of achievement tests. 2. Even the content validity of achievement tests is considerably high however, achievement items are focused on evaluation 3 domains(knowledge, comprehension, application). Therefore evaluation evenly among 6 cognitive domains is required. And further to reduce the deviation of schools, there are needs to active interchange between teachers.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.145-174
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• 2009

Based on the thinking that people can understand more clearly when the problem is related with their prior knowledge, the Purpose of this study was to analysis students' informal knowledge, which is constructed through their mathematical experience in the context of real-world situations. According to this purpose, the following research questions were. 1) What is the characteristics of students' informal knowledge about fraction before formal fraction instruction in school? 2) What is the difference of informal knowledge of fraction according to reasoning ability and grade. To investigate these questions, 18 children of first, second and third grade(6 children per each grade) in C elementary school were selected. Among the various concept of fraction, part-whole fraction, quotient fraction, ratio fraction and measure fraction were selected for the interview. I recorded the interview on digital camera, drew up a protocol about interview contents, and analyzed and discussed them after numbering and comment. The conclusions are as follows: First, students already constructed informal knowledge before they learned formal knowledge about fraction. Among students' informal knowledge they knew correct concepts based on formal knowledge, but they also have ideas that would lead to misconceptions. Second, the informal knowledge constructed by children were different according to grade. This is because the informal knowledge is influenced by various experience on learning and everyday life. And the students having higher reasoning ability represented higher levels of knowledge. Third, because children are using informal knowledge from everyday life to learn formal knowledge, we should use these informal knowledge to instruct more efficiently.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.87-116
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to explore how units-coordination ability is related to understanding fraction concepts. For this purpose, a teaching experiment was conducted with one fourth grade student, Eunseo for four months(2019.3. ~ 2019.6.). We analyzed in details how Eunseo's units-coordinating operations related to her understanding of fraction changed during the teaching experiment. At an early stage, Eunseo with a partitive fraction scheme recognized fractions as another kind of natural numbers by manipulating fractions within a two-levels-of-units structure. As she simultaneously recognized proper fraction and a referent whole unit as a multiple of the unit fraction, she became to distinguish fractions from natural numbers in manipulating proper fractions. Eunseo with a reversible partitive fraction scheme constructed a natural number greater than 1, as having an interiorized three-levels-of-units structure and established an improper fraction with three levels of units in activity. Based on the results of this study, conclusions and pedagogical implications were presented.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.193-209
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• 2013

This study was designed to identify how teachers and students solve problems and communicate with each other during the course of study through application of PBL questions that can be utilized in math ratio and graph sections of the 6th-grade elementary school curriculum in class. Therefore we haved figure it out that through pbl class student acquired a propound knowledge in math and showed self-directed learning through various communication activities, and that they finally showed positive attitude and confidence in this subject.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.327-347
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• 2009

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the effects of mathematical communication-centered teaching using peer feedbacks on students' mathematics achievement and mathematical dispositions toward mathematics, and then this study examined the characteristics of feedbacks used by students. To do this study, two sixth grade classes selected from an elementary school in Seoul participated in the current study; one class for a treatment group applying mathematical communication-centered teaching using peer feedback, and the other for a comparison group applying traditional teaching using teacher-centered communication. The results of this study showed the fact that a treatment group of mathematical communication-centered teaching applying peer feedback scored statistically higher than a comparison group applying teacher-centered communication with respect to both students' mathematical achievement and disposition. Especially, this communication-centered teaching program focused on peer feedback was more effective to middle or lower level students than higher level students. In addition, mathematical communication-centered teaching applying peer feedbacks helps students reflect their own thinking process about problem solving, and students experienced the improvement of their confidence about mathematics from opportunities to provide peers with feedbacks. Finally, the present study suggests the important role of communication in mathematics learning, particularly student-to-student feedbacks rather than teacher-to-students feedbacks. That is to say, students need to have many opportunities to represent their own mathematical thinking processes using mathematical language.