• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.48 no.2
• /
• pp.149-167
• /
• 2009

This study was aimed to examine problem-solving ability of fifth graders on two types of mathematical essay problems, and to analyze the process of mathematical justification in solving the essay problems. For this purpose, a total of 14 mathematical essay problems were developed, in which half of the items were single tasks and the other half were data-provided tasks. Sixteen students with higher academic achievements in mathematics and the Korean language were chosen, and were given to solve the mathematical essay problems individually. They then were asked to justify their solution methods in groups of 4 and to reach a consensus through negotiation among group members. Students were good at understanding the given single tasks but they often revealed lack of logical thinking and representation. They also tended to use everyday language rather than mathematical language in explaining their solution processes. Some students experienced difficulty in understanding the meaning of data in the essay problems. With regard to mathematical justification, students employed more internal justification by experience or mathematical logic than external justification by authority. Given this, this paper includes implications for teachers on how they need to teach mathematics in order to foster students' logical thinking and communication.

• School Mathematics
• /
• v.18 no.3
• /
• pp.503-526
• /
• 2016

The study aimed at determining the identity of mathematics essay test in the university entrance examination. For this purpose, a document research was conducted for higher order thinking and mathematics essay ability and it analyzed the goal of assessment and the tendency of problem settings and looked into mathematics essay problems of twenty-five universities. As a result, the study found out that evaluation factors of mathematics essay test requires higher order thinking ability including mathematical knowledge and essay ability such as mathematical knowledge, understanding, problem solving, logical and critical thinking, creative ability, power of expression, argument skills. Also, problems from previous mathematics essay tests were set mainly to assess mathematical knowledge, understanding and problem solving. Based on the findings, the past mathematics essay tests in university entrance examination in Korea that require logical and critical thinking, creative ability, power of expression, argument skills were a rather small percentage of questions.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
• /
• v.28 no.4
• /
• pp.553-571
• /
• 2014

Mathematical process is an issue in current mathematics education. In this paper discuss how to assess the mathematical process using essay type questions. For this we first suggest the concept of Mathematical Process Oriented Question which is an essay type question and possible to assess mathematical processes, that is, the mathematical communication, reasoning, and problem solving as well as mathematics knowledge. And we develop a framework for developing the mathematical process oriented question and rubric, examples of assessment standards and those questions containing rubric for assessing mathematical processes. The results of this paper can serve as basic data and examples for follow up research about mathematical process assessment.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.95-120
• /
• 2011

Modern society is the age of the information. As new information is springing up every day and pace of change becomes faster, the importance of communication skills is growing. The recent mathematics education is recognized as not a fragmentary mathematical knowledge or results of the learning, but a procedure of mathematical thinking, and the effective expression skill of their mathematical ideas and the ability to forward it to others are regarded very serious. As the method of mathematics evaluation, mathematical essay is introduced to replace the existing multiple-choice written test. This method assess the ability which students have, that express the reorganized knowledge and information according to given situation by themselves. Ultimately, it is expected to help that students get the higher order thinking skills such as logical thinking and creativity. However, definition of elementary mathematical essay is unclear, and proper teaching methods is lacking for each stage of elementary school students. Thus, in this paper, I have defined the concept of elementary mathematical essay and made a foundation of elementary mathematical essay research, then researched about the effective utilization of elementary mathematical essay using school education. Also elementary mathematical essay teaching-learning materials is developed and applied to analyzed the students' responses. Using this program, in real elementary school education, the implications has deduced.

• School Mathematics
• /
• v.16 no.3
• /
• pp.543-565
• /
• 2014

The purpose of this study is investigating the various properties related with mathematical processes in the mathematical essay lessons, analyzing the positive changes of students, and proposing an example that the mathematical essay lessons can be a model for changing traditional mathematical lessons. To carry out the research, mathematical essay questions were developed based upon the high school mathematics curriculum in probability and statistics domain. Eight 12th graders were participated for the research. Variety of properties related mathematical problem solving, reasoning, and communication in the lessons were appeared. The research conclude that mathematical essays are helpful not only appearance of general properties related mathematics process, but also appearance of properties that would be low chance of developed.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
• /
• v.28 no.1
• /
• pp.131-154
• /
• 2014

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of essay writing-centered mathematics instruction on problem solving and mathematical deposition in the elementary school. For the present study, two 6th grade classes with equivalent achievement in terms of problem solving and mathematical disposition based on the pretest. A total of 15 mathematics lessons focused on writing activities were administered to the experiment group for two months, while the textbook-based traditional lessons were given to the comparison group. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to analyze the data. The results of the present study showed that essay writing-centered mathematics teaching is statistically superior that the textbook-based mathematics teaching with respect to students' problem solving and mathematical disposition. In addition, it was evidenced that essay writing-centered mathematics instruction makes an influence on students' perceptions toward essay-based assessment in a positive way.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.541-563
• /
• 2014

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the curriculum, in which pre-service teachers experience mathematical process and develop assessment items and standards through the process experience in a mathematical essay course, affects the pre-service teachers and suggest its implications for teacher education. Fourty nine pre-service teachers, registered at a mathematical essay course in a K university in Seoul, developed mathematical essay problems and their assessment standards, and their developed processes were analyzed. According to the analysis results, first, mathematical essay problems developed by the fifty students reflect components of mathematical processes. Especially, one characteristic in revising assessment items shows that pre-service teachers considered not only justification process through different levels of difficulty and mathematical reasoning, but also logical descriptions through problem solving, when they worked on group discussions and examined middle school and high school students' responses. Second, while pre-service teachers developed rubrics for their assessment items and revised the rubrics based on students' responses, they established assessment standards which employed mathematical process by focusing on problem solving process rather than results and considering students' unexpected problem solving. The results imply a concrete method in planning and executing a mathematical essay course which makes use of mathematical process in teacher education.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
• /
• v.27 no.4
• /
• pp.567-580
• /
• 2013

As integrated essay writing is performed in university entrance examinations, teachers and students recognize the importance of integrated essay, but teachers have still difficulties of teaching methods. The purpose of this study is to derive educational implications through case of mathematics instruction for integrated essay education to pre-service mathematics teachers. The content knowledge of this class is a definition of conic section in mathematics and properties of conic section in an antenna reflector. The students have to discover them using the history of math, manipulative material, paper-folding and computer simulation. In this teaching and learning process the students can realize mathematical knowledge invented by humans through history of mathematics. The students can evaluate the validity of that as create and justify a mathematical proposition. Also, the students can explain the relation between them logically and descript cause or basis convincingly in the process of justifying. We should keep our study to instructional materials and teaching methods in integrated essay education.

• East Asian mathematical journal
• /
• v.32 no.4
• /
• pp.519-543
• /
• 2016

Today the high school mathematics lesson has an effect on the scholastic achievement internationally, but fails to lead to the interest in the mathematics which stimulates the intellectual curiosity. Due to this, 2015 revised curriculum includes the effort to improve the emotional aspect of mathematics positively. It is needed that the teaching method through discussion and debate must be introduced to accomplish the objective of the mathematics in 2015 revised curriculum focused on the improvement of the ability and attitude to solve the problems creatively by increasing the mathematical communication skill of the students. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of mathematical essay-typed lesson focused on discussion and debate on the mathematical disposition and attitude of high school student. The findings from this study provided that the essay-typed lessons focused on discussion and debate improved the subject students' mathematical achievement and disposition and attitude, but it is not significant change.

• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.47 no.2
• /
• pp.181-195
• /
• 2008

The purpose of this study was to investigate the understanding of basic knowledge of mathematics for $6^{th}$ grade students in elementary school by an essay test and provide instructional suggestions for teachers. A total of 132 students from 6 classes in 3 elementary schools were tested and analyzed in terms of the characteristics of correct answers and types of incorrect answers. The results showed that students had poor understanding of basic conceptual concepts and principles throughout six content areas of school mathematics curriculum, despite their good performance on mathematical skills. This study included implications to teaching and learning for each of the content areas.