• The Mathematical Education
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.13-33
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• 2004

Many questions have been raised about mathematical education in vocational high schools. In this study, we have reorganized a typical mathematics textbook used in vocational high schools to check if this reorganization could be effective in students' learning. We also examined students'feeling about this. Contrary to our expectations, we could not find any noticeable differences in students' achievement. But we found that students with a high grade tend to major in mathematics- related subjects.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.233-249
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• 2010

It seems that it is critical to comprehend mathematics as a tool subject in order to understand a number of calculations in the professional subjects in the vocational high schools. This study is designed to determine "how much mathematics is connected to specialized subjects in terms of mathematical content at vocational high schools". To investigate the research questions, this study examined the connections between the mathematical topics included in professional subjects and those of mathematics subjects in the vocational high school. In the end, this study suggest that is should be necessary to make new mathematics textbook which reflects the reality and needs of the present vocational high school students.

• Journal for History of Mathematics
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.147-156
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• 2006

The purposes of this study are that understand vocational high school student's scholastic ability, dream and conception about mathematics exactly and that we find a educational mathematics program suitable to vocational high school student. Through this improvement of the curriculum in vocational high school, we will find the way that increase efficiency.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.373-386
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• 2011

Students approach mathematical problem solving in fundamentally different ways, particularly problems requiring conceptual understanding and complicated strategies. The main objective of this study is to compare students' performance with different thinking styles (Field-dependent vs. Field independent) in mathematical problem solving. A sample of 242 high school males and females (17-18 years old) were tested based on the Witkin's cognitive style (Group Embedded Figure Test) and by a math exam designed in accordance with Bloom's Taxonomy of cognitive level. The results obtained indicated that the effect of field dependency on student's mathematical performance was significant. Moreover, field-independent (FI) students showed more effective performance than field-dependent (FD) ones in math tasks. Male students with FI styles achieved higher results compared to female students with FD cognitive style. Moreover, FI students experienced few difficulties than FD students in Bloom's Cognitive Levels. The implications of these results emphasize that cognitive predictor variables (FI vs. FD) could be challenging and rather distinctive factor for students' achievement.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.611-626
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• 2022

In this study, we introduced the case of college calculus course for vocational high school graduates with coding. We suggest this case as an alternative to overcome mathematics anxiety. Contents, python/SageMath codes, and textbook for this course, which help students to easily and quickly review middle and high school mathematics, were newly developed by authors. Due to the use of codes and chat with classmates in learning management system, most of the students who took this course reported that they no longer felt anxious in complex mathematics problems, had a full understanding of calculus concepts, could solve almost problems in any calculus textbooks with or without codes, and could explain calculus concepts to other students in their own words. In this way if mathematics and coding is properly used in mathematics education, it helps students with weak mathematical backgrounds or mathematics anxiety to restore confidence in mathematics in college. This could be applicable in secondary mathematics education.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.197-230
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• 2009

The purpose of the study was to reveal the current situations and suggest some ideas to improve the mathematics education of magnet high schools in Korea. Magnet high schools were founded to offer special professional education for students who are interested in a specialized area. Students were selected based on their abilities and potentials in those fields. In Magnet high schools, the curriculums were constructed based on these objectives. Also close connections were established with universities through professional education. However, many magnet high schools are facing difficulties to chase two rabbits at the same time. Those are university admissions and specialized education for near future employment. Furthermore, increasing number of students who want to study at the university level cause more difficulties. The results of the study indicated several suggestions to improve current situation of the magnet high schools.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.77-89
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• 2017

Although it is not necessary to have much mathematical knowledge in Major Courses of Animal Resources curriculums in agricultural high school, the function of mathematics class has a much effect on Major Courses. Therefore, we extracted the mathematics contents included in Major Courses of Animal Resources curriculums in agricultural high school, and also evaluated students' understanding according to the description method in textbooks of Major Courses. Furthermore, we analyzed students' preference about the description method in textbooks related to the Major Courses. As a result, it turns out that the level of mathematics contents of Animal Resources major curriculums does not break bounds of middle school level. Furthermore, many students are not able to solve the middle school level of problems. It is also shown that the most preferred description method in textbooks of Animal Resources major curriculums is the sentence-equation mixed type. In this study, we propose to reconstruct the mathematics contents with basic knowledge needed to complete the Major Courses in order that students can complete them more easily, and furthermore, to choose the description method in textbooks of Major Courses as sentence-equation mixed type and detailed explanation about terms should be included into the bargain.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.127-144
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• 2000

School mathematics are composed of five major units of numbers& algebraic expressions, equations & inequalities, functions, figures, and statistics & probabilities. But if we look into the general activities of mathematics teachers in their class, they rather do not take into account students\` cognitive and affective traits or degree of difficulty which each of the unit has. For successful teaching of mathematics, teachers should take into consideration many affective items which influence the students\` scholastic achievement. Among them student\`s liking for the mathematics is commonly accepted as the most important factor for successful learning. In this study, with the five units of school mathematics, we investigated the students\` degree of likings for each unit. To fined out whether there are any differences in students\` likings for the mathematics, between regions and kind of schools, we classified the population according to the locations and kinds of schools. To do this, we divided the whole region into four parts such as Seoul, large city, medium city and town. Moreover, we partitioned the whole secondary school students into four groups of middle school students, vocational high school students, pro-science students of academic high schools, and pro-liberal arts students of academic high schools. From each partition, we sampled similar size of experimental groups which came up to total 1260 students. Analysing the answer sheets which the students responded about the questionnaire, we investigated the following questions using the ANOVA test. 1. Is there any differences in the trend of likings for each unit between the regional classifications? 2. Is there any differences in the trend of likings for each unit between the classifications of secondary schools? 3. What trends of changes are there in the degree of likings for each unit according to the rising of students\` grade?

• 대한공업교육학회지
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.125-143
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• 2012

This study aimed to identify the effect of the instruction applied with a project method for the 'Making Model by Architecture' unit in vocational High schools on the improvement of the Key competences. With this aim, the study selected as an experimental group, control group third graders in two classroom in G vocational High Schools in Goyang, Gyeonggi-do. Aiming at the selected students in the experimental group and the control group, the study conducted a pre-test of their Key competences; thus, the study confirmed that there was no statistically significant difference. Then, the study offered a class applied with a project method to the experimental group, while offering a traditional instruction to the control group. After offering the class, the study undertook a post-test, and verified the effect. In order to prove the test result, the study carried out a Hest using the SPSSWIN 12.0 statistical program, while the significance level being ${\alpha}$<.05. The conclusions obtained from this study include the following. All the six selected areas including 'problem-solving skills', 'communication skills', 'resource utilization competence', 'mathematical competence', 'interpersonal management competence' and 'self-management competence', which were supposed to be appropriate for this study among the sub-areas of Key competences, were found to show significant differences between the experimental group applied with a project method and the control group as a result of the post-test of the two groups. In summarizing the above research results, the class using a project method for the 'Making Model by Architecture' unit was discovered to be effective for improving Key competences. In particular, it may be more effective learning method for enhancing six areas greatly relevant to the project method among various sub-areas of Key competences.