• The Mathematical Education
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.377-393
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• 2012

The understanding demands the different degree of the understanding according to student's learning situation. In this paper, we investigate what is the foundation for the complete understanding for the generalization in the generalization-process and justification of some concepts or some theories, through a case. We discovered that the completeness of the understanding in the generalization-process and justification requires 'the meaningful-mental object' which can give the meaning about the concept or theory to students. Students can do the generalization-process through the construction of 'the meaningful-mental object' and confirm the validity of generalization through 'the meaningful-mental object' which is constructed by them. And we can judge the whether students construct the completeness of the understanding or not, by 'the meaningful-mental object' of the student. Hence 'the meaningful-mental object' are vital condition for the generalization-process and justification.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.461-480
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• 2021

There have been gradually a few studies on Noticing in the domestic and international area. For the purpose of increasing the concern on teacher noticing and pursuing the affluent studies on the noticing, this study tried to explore and understand the background, the meaning, and the properties of the teacher noticing while summing up the views of the various researchers. As a result, the teacher noticing could be defined as a cognitive process which is focused on mathematical objects, students' mathematical thinking, students' emotions, teaching strategies, classroom environment and interprets them to determine how to react. From this, noticing might be cognitive process which is a combined form of the objects and cognitive behavior, while the objects whom teachers notice covers up the mathematical objects and the teaching objects. Eventually, this study expects to serve as a basis to foster the in-depth understanding of teacher noticing and to derive the follow-up studies.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.41-58
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• 2003

This study firstly examined 18 prospective secondary mathematics teachers' understanding of the nature of definitions and the use of the dynamic geometry software Sketchpad to not only improve their understanding of definitions, but also their ability to define geometric concepts themselves. Results indicated that the evaluation of definitions by accurate construction and measurement enabled students to achieve a better understanding of necessary and sufficient conditions, as well as the ability to more readily find counter-examples, and to recognize uneconomical definitions, and improve them.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.143-172
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• 2010

In this paper, we present an analysis of how students understand some statistical terms, mainly from inferential statistics, which are taught at the high school level. We focus our analysis on those terms that present more difficulties and are persistent in spite of having been studied until the college level. This analysis leads us to a hierarchical classification of responses at different levels of understanding using the SOLO theoretical framework.

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

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.49-58
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to investigate how to teach algorithms in mathematics class. Until recently, traditional school mathematics was primarily treated as drill and practice or memorizing of algorithmic skills. In an attempt to shift the focus and energies of mathematics teachers toward problem solving, conceptual understanding and the development of number sense, the recent reform recommendations do-emphasize algorithmic skills, in particular, paper-pencil algorithms. But the development of algorithmic thinking provides the foundation for student's mathematical power and confidence in their ability to do mathematics. Hence, for learning algorithms meaningfully, they should be taught with problem solving and conceptual understanding.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.67-83
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• 2008

Promoting students' mathematics understanding is an important research theme in mathematics education. According to general theories of learning, mathematics understanding is close to active learning or significant learning. Thus, if a teacher wants to promote his/her students' mathematics understanding, he/she should pay attention to the students so that the students' thinking is in active situation. In the first part of this paper, some mathematics teachers' ideas about paying attention to their students in Chinese high school are given by questionnaire and interview. In the second part of this paper, we give some teaching episodes about how experienced mathematics teachers promote their students' mathematics understanding based on paying attention on them.

• School Mathematics
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.61-77
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• 2010

Understanding of mathematical terms plays one of the key factors in understanding and utilizing related mathematical contents. In order to understand such terms well, it is necessary to define and use them appropriately. In this study, we first investigate specific instances of inappropriate using or representing mathematical terms in elementary school mathematics textbooks from a mathematical point of view and a consistent point of view. We then suggest implications for using and representing such mathematical terms appropriately.

• School Mathematics
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.547-561
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• 2010

Even though statistics is considered as one of the areas of mathematical science in the school curriculum, it has been well documented that statistics has distinct features compared to mathematics. However, there is little empirical educational research showing distinct features of statistics, especially research into the understanding of statistical concepts which are different from other areas in school mathematics. In addition, there is little discussion of a relationship between the ability of mathematical thinking and the ability of understanding statistical concepts. This study extracted some important concepts which consist of the fundamental statistical reasoning and investigated how mathematically high achieving students understood these concepts. As a result, there were both kinds of concepts that mathematically high achieving students developed well or not. There is a weak correlation between mathematical ability and the level of understanding statistical concepts.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.215-239
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• 2015

A goal of this study is figuring out how fraction learning centered on various representation activities influences the fraction comprehension and mathematical attitudes. The study focused on 33 4th-grade students of B elementary school in Seoul. In the study, 15 fraction learning classes comprising enactive, iconic, and symbolic representations took place over 6 weeks. After the classes, the ratio of the students who achieved relational understanding increased and the students averagely recorded 90 pt or more on the fraction comprehension test I, II and III. Two-dependent samples t-test was conducted to analyze a significant difference in mathematical attitudes between pre-test and post-test. On the test result, there was the meaningful difference with 0.01 level of significance. To conclude, the fraction learning centered on various representation activities improves students' relational understanding and fraction understanding. In addition, the fraction learning centered on various representation activities gives positive influences on mathematical attitudes since it increases learning orientation, self-control, interests, value cognition, and self-confidence of the students and decreases fears of the students.