• School Mathematics
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.317-333
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine the thinking characteristics of mathematically gifted elementary school students in the process of modified prize-sharing problem solving and each student's thinking changes in the middle of discussion. To determine the relevance of the research task, 19 sixth graders enrolled in a local joint gifted class received instruction, and then 49 students took lessons. Out of them, 19 students attended a gifted education institution affiliated to local educational authorities, and 15 were in their fourth to sixth grades at a beginner's class in a science gifted education center affiliated to a university. 15 were in their fifth and sixth grades at an enrichment class in the same center. Two or three students who seemed to be highly attentive and express themselves clearly were selected from each group. Their behavioral and teaming characteristics were checked, and then an intensive observational case study was conducted with the help of an assistant researcher by videotaping their classes and having an interview. As a result of analyzing their thinking in the course of solving the modified prize-sharing problem, there were common denominators and differences among the student groups investigated, and each student was very distinctive in terms of problem-solving process and thinking level as well.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.20 no.3 s.27
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• pp.407-423
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• 2006

The reason why creativity becomes the important subject in 21th century is that it does an important role which solves many problems surrounding our whole life in this internationalization, globalization, knowledge-information age. But scholars who formerly researched the creativity-field explain the necessity of creativity with the internal and fundamental reasons. That is, scholars say that creative activities produce originative products and originality itself. And it is the root of which will be able to discover meaning of life and it -creativity - is successive activities that is demanded when individual life want to obtain important value by expressing one's inner world to the outside using creative resource. Recently, with the trends of present age and the educational needs, research about creativity is actively carried out and it draws out the results that creativity can be developed and enhanced through education and training. So, now many researches have focused on how to develop the creativity. Investigating those researches, we found that the recent issues of researches on creativity were changing and now they focused on creative instruction methods and behavioral factors. Especially, they were selected as the subject related to the creative education - creative instructional method and program, atmosphere in classroom, and factors of teacher. It means that the past researches which were a little bit conceptive have been changing to material ones which will be able to enhance creativity and its effect. So, in this research, we have developed the program for CPS(Creativity Problem Solving) and verified its effect.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.335-347
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• 2014

Size/scale is a central idea in the science curriculum, providing explanations for various phenomena. However, few studies have been conducted to explore student understanding of this concept and to suggest instructional approaches in scientific contexts. In contrast, there have been more studies in mathematics, regarding the use of number lines to relate the nature of numbers to operation and representation of magnitude. In order to better understand variations in student conceptions of size/scale in scientific contexts and explain learning difficulties including alternative conceptions, this study suggests an approach that links mathematics with the analysis of student conceptions of size/scale, i.e. the analysis of mathematical structure and reasoning for a number line. In addition, data ranging from high school to college students facilitate the interpretation of conceptual complexity in terms of mathematical development of a number line. In this sense, findings from this study better explain the following by mathematical reasoning: (1) varied student conceptions, (2) key aspects of each conception, and (3) potential cognitive dimensions interpreting the size/scale concepts. Results of this study help us to understand the troublesomeness of learning size/scale and provide a direction for developing curriculum and instruction for better understanding.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.559-577
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of discourse-based math instructions on the students' mathematical attitudes and learning achievements by providing fifth graders with an opportunity to take active part in learning during math classes and applying discourse-based math instructions, which are to expand the speaking experiences as the most fundamental way to express ideas in communication. Those research efforts led to the following results: First, the discourse-based math instructions turned out to have positive influences on flexibility, will power, curiosity, reflection, and value of mathematical attitudes. When the results were reviewed before and after the instructions without considering the subvariables of attitude, there were statistically significant differences(p<0.01), which indicates that the discourse-based math instructions exerted very positive effects on the students mathematical attitudes. Second, there were no statistically significant effects in learning achievements between the experimental and comparative group, but the experimental group, which recorded low mean scores in the pre-test, increased their mean scores by 3.81 points in the post-test, which suggests that the discourse-based math instructions had positive influences on them. Third, the subjects' responses on the questionnaire on discourse-based instructions reveal that the discourse-based math instructional provided them with an opportunity to explore solutions in various ways. In short, discourse-based math instructions have positive influences on mathematical attitudes and are effective in increasing communication ability.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.62 no.1
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• pp.95-115
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• 2023

Even the teachers who agree with the necessity of effective mathematical discussions find it difficult to orchestrate such discussions in the actual lessons. This study focused on analyzing the difficulties 15 elementary school teachers faced in applying "the five practices for orchestrating productive mathematics discussions" to their lessons. Specifically, this study analyzed the process of planning, implementing, and reflecting on the lessons to which three or four teachers as a teacher community applied the five practices. The results of this study showed that the teachers experienced difficulties in selecting and presenting tasks tailored to the student levels and class environment, monitoring all students' solutions, and identifying the core mathematical ideas in student solutions. In addition, this study revealed practical and specific difficulties that had not been described in the previous studies, such as writing a lesson plan for effective use, simultaneously performing multiple teacher roles, and visually sharing student presentations. This study is expected to provide practical tips for elementary school teachers who are eager to promote effective mathematical discussions and to provoke professional discourse for teacher educators through specific examples.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.39-55
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• 2024

Recently, the 2022 revised mathematics curriculum has established achievement standards for equal sign and equality, and efforts have been made to examine teaching methods and student understanding of relational understanding of equal sign. In this context, this study conducted a lesson that emphasized relational understanding in an introduction to equal sign, and compared and analyzed the understanding of equal sign between the experimental group, which participated in the lesson emphasizing relational understanding and the control group, which participated in the standard lesson. For this purpose, two classes of students participated in this study, and the results were analyzed by administering pre- and post-tests on the understanding of equal sign. The results showed that students in the experimental group had significantly higher average scores than students in the control group in all areas of equation-structure, equal sign-definition, and equation-solving. In addition, when comparing the means of students by item, we found that there was a significant difference between the means of the control group and the experimental group in the items dealing with equal sign in the structure of 'a=b' and 'a+b=c+d', and that most of the students in the experimental group correctly answered 'sameness' as the meaning of equal sign, but there were still many responses that interpreted the equal sign as 'answer'. Based on these results, we discussed the implications for instruction that emphasizes relational understanding in equal sign introduction lessons.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.533-551
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• 2015

Problem posing in school mathematics is generally regarded to make a new problem from contexts, information, and experiences relevant to realistic or mathematical situations. Also, it is to reconstruct a similar or more complicated new problem based on an original problem. The former is called as problem generation and the latter is as problem reformulation. The purpose of this study was to explore the co-relation between problem generation and problem reformulation, and the educational effectiveness of each problem posing. For this purpose, on the subject of 33 pre-service secondary school teachers, this study developed two types of problem posing activities. The one was executed as the procedures of [problem generation${\rightarrow}$solving a self-generated problem${\rightarrow}$reformulation of the problem], and the other was done as the procedures of [problem generation${\rightarrow}$solving the most often generated problem${\rightarrow}$reformulation of the problem]. The intent of the former activity was to lead students' maintaining the ability to deal with the problem generation and reformulation for themselves. Furthermore, through the latter one, they were led to have peers' thinking patterns and typical tendency on problem generation and reformulation according to the instructor(the researcher)'s guidance. After these activities, the subject(33 pre-service teachers) was responded in the survey. The information on the survey is consisted of mathematical difficulties and interests, cognitive and affective domains, merits and demerits, and application to the instruction and assessment situations in math class. According to the results of this study, problem generation would be geared to understand mathematical concepts and also problem reformulation would enhance problem solving ability. And it is shown that accomplishing the second activity of problem posing be more efficient than doing the first activity in math class.

• 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.

• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.1-12
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• 2023

The purpose of the study is to analyze the impact of blended learning's external classroom formats and internal teaching strategies, which has been implemented in university classes due to COVID-19, on students' academic achievement and learners' perceptions, as well as to provide insights into the desirable direction of online education. The study was conducted during the 1st semester of 2022 at G University, targeting students taking Calculus I. The experimental group consisted of 117 students, while the control group consisted of 707 students. Blended learning, involving a combination of face-to-face classes, online classes, and mixed teaching methods, was implemented, and academic achievement and learner perceptions were assessed. The research findings indicate that compared to solely online classes, adopting a blended learning approach with online classes before the midterm and face-to-face classes afterwards resulted in a decline in academic achievement. The unprepared and simplistic external format of blended learning was found to be ineffective, however, a blended learning model consisting solely of online classes, incorporating a mix of asynchronous and synchronous instruction, demonstrated positive learner perceptions. Additionally, utilizing technology in the teaching strategies yielded positive outcome.