• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.25-47
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• 2024

Mathematical modeling activities are gaining popularity in K-12 mathematics education curricula worldwide. These activities serve dual purposes by aiding students in making sense of real-world situations intertwined with social justice while acquiring mathematical knowledge. Despite efforts to prepare teacher candidates for instructing in mathematical modeling within a single country, little attention has been given to teacher candidates' approaches to mathematical modeling on a social justice issue from different countries. This article employs an in-depth, small-scale comparative study to examine the approaches of U.S. and Korean teacher candidates in solving a justice-oriented mathematics task. Our findings reveal that, although both U.S. and Korean teacher candidates identified certain variables as key when constructing a mathematical model, Korean teacher candidates formulated a more nuanced model than U.S. candidates by considering diverse variables. However, U.S. teacher candidates exhibited a heightened engagement in linking the task to social justice issues, whereas Korean teacher candidates barely perceived real-world problems in relation to social justice concerns. This study serves as a valuable tool to inform the roles and limitations of teacher education programs, shaped within specific educational contexts.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-25
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• 2009

The purpose of this research is the investigation of mathematics pre service teachers' disposition. Their disposition will be used for preposition of preservice Leacher program for making pre service teachers' participate any program willingly and extend their thinking. For this research, the researcher collected various data from investigation-presentation, report for practice and beauty of mathematics, micro teaching, and peer-evaluation. Preservice teachers had positive attitude for mathematics. They described their feeling, thinking and reflection about various methods of instruction and prefer to have micro teaching. They described that the investigation-presentation was needed to change some. From the results, the teacher preparation program is needed to integrate theory and practice to make preservice teachers gain profound knowledge on pedagogical content knowledge by making them high their interest and sensitivity on mathematics.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.229-250
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• 2011

The Mathematics Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instrument is one of the most popular instruments used to measure elementary preservice teachers' efficacy beliefs in mathematics teaching. The instrument was, however, developed in the United States and is perhaps not appropriate for other cultures. In this study, the instrument was translated into Korean and carefully reviewed by Korean mathematics teacher education professors. Analysis of the review indicated that eight out of the 21 items were appropriate while the others needed to be revised. Items were identified as inappropriate due to awkwardness, multiple meanings, tense disagreements, and vagueness. These items were modified to better fit the Korean context. The instrument was revised with two versions: one for elementary and the other for secondary pre service teachers.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.75-87
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• 2014

It is central to use a scale to measure a person's level of a construct in mathematics education research. This article explains a practical process through which a researcher rapidly can develop an instrument to measure the construct. The process includes research questioning, reviewing the literature, framing a background theory, treating the data, and reviewing the instrument. The statistical treatment of data includes normality analysis, item-total correlation analysis, reliability analysis, and factor analysis. A virtual example is given for better understanding of the process.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.379-398
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• 2011

In learning environment at mathematics education, prove and refute are essential abilities to demonstrate whether and why a statement is true or false. Learning proofs and counter examples within the domain of limit of sequence is important because preservice teacher encounter limit of sequence in many mathematics courses. Recently, a number of studies have showed evidence that pre service and students have problem with mathematical proofs but many research studies have focused on abilities to produce proofs and counter examples in domain of limit of sequence. The aim of this study is to contribute to research on preservice teachers' productions of proofs and counter examples, as participants showed difficulty in writing these proposition. More importantly, the analysis provides insight and understanding into the design of curriculum and instruction that may improve preservice teachers' learning in mathematics courses.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.89-102
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to diagnose the problems of mathematics education in Korea by conducting an in-depth analysis of international comparative studies, a Delphi method, and a survey. Further analysis of TIMSS and PISA results also reveals several negative aspects of mathematics education practice in Korea. The mathematics education experts' opinions collected by Delphi method were classified into 12 categories: private education and test-driven education, curriculum and textbooks, lessons, evaluation, teacher, learner, teaching aid and facilities. affective aspects of mathematics, discrepancy between a theory and a practice, preservice/inservice teacher education and teacher employment test, education policy, and overall. Another survey was conducted to focus more on the development of curriculum which is a pending issue. Considering the fact that mathematics education should contribute to improve practical aspect as well as elaborate theoretical aspect, this study lays a foundation of improvement of mathematics education in Korea.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.45 no.3 s.114
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• pp.295-313
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• 2006

University teacher education programs have sought for ways of how to improve student teaching in order to supply mathematics teachers with practical theory to achieve the goals of the current educational reform in school mathematics. In this context, the purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of student teachers' teaching experience in the after-school mathematics programs and the ways of how to develop the after-school learning programs as an effective site for learning to teach based on the inquiry into student teachers' own teaching experience. For the purpose, data were collected through the interviews with the student teachers who had taught after-school mathematics class. In addition, data were collected through survey, class observation, and seminal meetings with the student teachers in order to supplement the findings from the interview analysis. Data analysis focused on the student teachers' experience with teaching in after-school mathematics classes, that is, what and how they had learned as teachers, what kinds of difficulties they encountered in their teaching and supports that they expect to improve their learning through teaching. The analysis shows that the teaching experience in the after-school programs had positively contributed to their development as future mathematics teachers. Specifically, the after-school programs provide the site for learning through teaching at the early stage of teacher education program. The after-school programs provided the students teachers for the opportunity to participate peripherally in educational practice of school. Through the participation, the student teachers developed positive attitudes toward teaching career and became to have more solid ideas about how to teach mathematics. Based on the analysis, this research provides following suggestions concerning how to improve student teaching. First, it is necessary to provide student teachers to participate into the practice of teaching at the early stage of teacher education programs. Second, it is important to give students teacher opportunity to participate in teaching at peripheral and legitimate positions. Finally, it is necessary to construct mentoring networks to support student teachers to move from a peripheral position toward a center of teaching practice.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.58 no.3
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• pp.347-365
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• 2019

It is important to pay attention to how teachers recognize and use curriculum materials in order to link written curriculum and enacted curriculum. In this study, 90 preservice mathematics teachers were surveyed to identify their perspective and reading of curriculum materials. Especially, we focused on the curriculum documents, textbooks, and teachers' guidebooks containing the concept of conditional probability which is addressed in highschool mathematics curriculum. The various misconceptions of conditional probability were reported in the many researches, and there are multiple methods to introduce conditional probability in mathematics classes. As a result, curriculum materials have some limits to be used as they are and considered to be reconstructable by participants, but their curriculum reading were mainly classified to be descriptive and evaluative, not to be interpretive. However, unlike curriculum documents, textbooks and teachers' guidebooks were partially interpreted by participants using their knowledge of conditional probability. The purpose of this study is to investigate the profession of mathematics teachers in terms of curriculum implementation. We expect that this study will provide a basic framework for analyzing mathematics teachers' works and suggest some implications for the professional development of mathematics teachers.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.63 no.3
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• pp.451-466
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• 2024

This study investigated elementary preservice teachers' conceptions of a generating line, an ambiguous concept in school mathematics. The preservice teachers' conceptions of a generating line can be classified into four types: (a) only cones have generating lines, (b) only cones and cylinders have generating lines, (c) solids of revolution have generating lines, (d) straight lines on the lateral surface are generating lines. 22.1% of all preservice teachers believed that only cones have generating lines, and most of them followed the definition of a generating line presented in elementary mathematics textbooks. The conception that only cones and cylinders have generating lines was the least investigated. However, since there were instances where generating lines were defined with the use of a director curve, it became important to explore topics more thoroughly, such as generating lines of a truncated cone. 27.9% of all preservice teachers believed that solids of revolution have generating lines. This conception was marked by differing opinions on whether spheres also have generating lines. The conception that straight lines on the lateral surface are generating lines was the most frequently investigated. This conception differs from the traditional view in school mathematics because it suggests using a director curve to define generating lines. Based on these analysis results, the researcher developed specific teaching methods that considered both subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge for preservice teachers. In addition, the researcher proposed a consensus definition of a generating line in mathematics education.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.61 no.1
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• pp.179-198
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• 2022

Teaching is delicate, complicated, and demanding work, and especially beginning teachers set forth their difficulties in preparing and implementing mathematics instruction. It is important to ensure the quality of beginning mathematics teachers' instruction above a consistent level because such affirmation justifies the national policy on teacher education as well as the individual efforts of preservice teachers in South Korea. The current study collected mathematics lessons of the two beginning teachers who graduated from the same teacher training institute and worked at the same high school. The findings reported what features their lessons have with regard to the learning environment, engaging students in learning, deepening student learning, and using representations of the edTPA in order to identify what can or cannot be expected in their mathematics instruction. The instruction of the one teacher was assessed middle or more than middle scores throughout the rubrics, but the other one had lower scores. Based on these findings, this study suggested the implications for teacher education in ways of improving the quality of instruction of beginning mathematics teachers.