• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.13-22
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• 2009

School children in Brunei Darussalam, as elsewhere, learn how to apply a lot of algorithms and formulas in mathematics. These include methods of finding the lowest common multiple and highest common multiple of numbers and methods of factorizing quadratics. Investigations and experience have shown that both able and less able students learn to do these mechanically and unimaginatively and in a way that is reliable when answering examination questions. Most of them do not, however, learn these algorithms and methods so as to develop a deeper insight of what they learn and thereby perform even more effectively in examinations. Yet it is possible to teach these and other methods for understanding in ways that are enjoyable and enable students to use them effectively and with flair.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.31-38
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• 2016

WHAT we teach, and HOW students experience it, are the primary factors that shape students' understanding and beliefs of what mathematics is all about. Further, students pick up their sense of mathematics from their experience with it. We have seen the results of the approach to "break the subject into pieces and make students master it bit by bit. As an alternative, we strive to create a teaching environment in which students are DOING mathematics and thereby engender selected aspects of "mathematical culture" in the classroom. The vehicle for doing this is the so-called Japanese Open-ended approach to teaching mathematics. We will discuss three aspects of the open-ended approach - process open, end product open, formulating problems open - and the associated approach to assessing learning.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.115-140
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper was to develop manipulative materials to teach the angle concepts and construct a teaching-learning program by using that. Furthermore, this study analyzed how does the program affect students understanding of the angle concepts. To check the effects of learning activities with manipulative materials on the understanding of an angle concepts, applied observation during class and write a mathematics journal writing, a description of students impressions at the end of the class and analyzed before and after test paper. We find that students approached the subject more friendly and knew well about the mathematical concepts by using materials. Furthermore, this activity helped that way to solve add and subtract of the angle, estimate ability, round angle concept, positive response in mathematics learning.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.55-74
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• 2014

This study examined the potential teaching strategies of prospective elementary teachers and their perceptions of the procedural/conceptual nature of examples. Fifty-four prospective teachers participated in this study, engaging in two-phase tasks. Analysis of data indicated that: (a) Overall, the participants' perceptions were geared toward putting emphasis on conceptual understanding rather than procedural understanding; but (b) Generally, procedure-oriented strategies were more frequently incorporated in participants' potential teaching plans. This implied that participants' preconceived ideas regarding math examples were not always reliable indicators of their potential teaching strategies. Implications and suggestions for mathematics teacher preparation are discussed.

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

• School Mathematics
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.227-241
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• 2009

The isoperimetric problem has been known from the time of antiquity. But the problem was not rigorously solved until Steiner published several proofs in 1841. At the time it stood at the center of controversy between analytic and geometric methods. The geometric approach give us more productive thinking (insight, structural understanding) than the analytic method (using Calculus). The purpose of this paper is to analysis and then to construct the isoperimetric problem which can be applied to the mathematically gifted students in the elementary school. The theoretical backgrounds of our analysis about our problem are based on the Gestalt psychology and mathematical reasoning. Our active program about the isoperimetric problem constructed by the Gestalt's view will contribute to improving a mathematical reasoning and to serving structural (relational) understanding of geometric figures.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.317-330
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• 2020

The purpose of this action research project was to study the effects of incorporating coding into the middle school math classroom affected student dispositions with math and their understanding of mathematical concepts. The project, involving a total of 107 US middle school students, used five data sources to examine these effects: a survey, a chart measuring student engagement, a pre- and post-assessment before and after the coding project, and teacher observation with reflection forms. After analyzing the data, it was found that incorporating coding into the middle school math classroom could have a positive impact on student math dispositions and their understanding of math concepts.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.69-82
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to explore how mathematics educators understand the terms having lexical ambiguity. Five terms with lexical ambiguity, leave, times, high, continuous, and convergent were selected based on literature review and recommendations of college calculus instructors. The participants consisted of four mathematics educators at a large Midwestern university. The qualitative data were collected from open-ended items in the survey. As a result of analysis, I provided participants' sentences with five terms showing their understanding of each term. The data analysis revealed that mathematics educators were not able to separate the meanings of the words such as leave and high when these words are frequently used in daily life, and the meanings in mathematics context are similar with that in daily context. Lexical ambiguity shown by mathematics educators can help mathematics teachers to understand the terms with lexical ambiguity and improve their instructions when those terms should be found in students' conversations.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.257-275
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• 2022

Recently, there are studies the argument that arithmetic rules established by the four fundamental arithmetic operations, in other words, commutative laws, associative laws, distributive laws, should be explicitly described in mathematics textbooks and the curriculum. These rules are currently implicitly presented or omitted from textbooks, but they contain important principles that foster mathematical thinking. This study aims to evaluate the current level of understanding of these computation rules and provide implications for the curriculum and textbook writing. To this end, the correct answer ratio of the five arithmetic rules for 1-4 grades 398 in five elementary schools was investigated and the type of error was analyzed and presented, and the subject to learn these rules and the points to be noted in teaching and learning were also presented. These results will help to clarify the achievement criteria and learning contents of the calculation rules, which were implicitly presented in existing national textbooks, in a new 2022 revised curriculum.

• Journal of the Korean Mathematical Society
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• v.59 no.2
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• pp.217-233
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• 2022

Although machine learning shows state-of-the-art performance in a variety of fields, it is short a theoretical understanding of how machine learning works. Recently, theoretical approaches are actively being studied, and there are results for one of them, margin and its distribution. In this paper, especially we focused on the role of margin in the perturbations of inputs and parameters. We show a generalization bound for two cases, a linear model for binary classification and neural networks for multi-classification, when the inputs have normal distributed random noises. The additional generalization term caused by random noises is related to margin and exponentially inversely proportional to the noise level for binary classification. And in neural networks, the additional generalization term depends on (input dimension) × (norms of input and weights). For these results, we used the PAC-Bayesian framework. This paper is considering random noises and margin together, and it will be helpful to a better understanding of model sensitivity and the construction of robust generalization.