• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.111-125
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• 2000

This paper presents cross-national perspectives on challenges in implementing current mathematics education reform ideals. This paper includes detailed qualitative descriptions of mathematics instruction from unevenly successful second-grade classrooms both in Koran and in the U. S with regared to reform recommendations. Despits dramatic differences in mathematics achivement between Korean and the U.S student. problems in both countries with regard to mathematics education are perceived to be very similar. The shared problems have a common origin in teacher-centered instruction. Educational leaders in both countries have persistently attempted to change the teacher-centered pedagogy to a student-centered approach. Many teachers report familiarity with and adherence to reform ideas, but their actual classroom teaching practices do not reflect the full implications of the reform ideals. Given the challenges in implementing reform, this study explored the breakdown that may occur between teachers adoption of reform objectives and their successful incorporation of reform ideals by comparing and contrasting two reform-oriented classrooms in both countries. This comparison and contrast provided a unique opportunity to reflect on possible subtle but crucial issues with regard to reform implementation. Thus, this study departed from past international comparisons in which the common objective has been to compare general social norma of typical mathematics classes across countries. This study was and exploratory, qualitative, comparative case study using grounded theory methodology based on constant comparative analysis for which the primary data sources were classroom video recordings and transcripts. The Korean portion of this study was conducted by the team of four researchers, including the author. The U.S portion of this study and a brief joint analysis were conducted by the author. This study compared and contrasted the classroom general social norms and sociomathematical norms of two Korean and two U.S second-grade teachers who aspired to implement reform. The two classrooms in each country were chosen because of their unequal success in activating the reform recommendation. Four mathematics lessons were videotaped from Korean classes, whereas fourteen lessons were videotaped from the U.S. classes. Intensive interviews were conducted with each teacher. The two classes within each country established similar participation patterns but very different sociomathematical norms. In both classes open-ended questioning, collaborative group work, and students own problem solving constituted the primary modes of classroom participation. However in one class mathematical significance was constituted as using standard algorithm with accuracy, whereas the other established a focus on providing reasonable and convincing arguments. Given these different mathematical foci, the students in the latter class had more opportunities to develop conceptual understanding than their counterparts. The similarities and differences to between the two teaching practices within each country clearly show that students learning opportunities do not arise social norms of a classroom community. Instead, they are closely related to its sociomathematical norms. Thus this study suggests that reform efforts highlight the importance of sociomathematical norms that established in the classroom microculture. This study also provides a more caution for the Korean reform movement than for its U.S. counterpart.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.49-70
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• 2023

This study aimed to design a robot programming lecture for pre-service mathematics teachers to improve their TPACK-P (TPACK-Programming) and analyze its effectiveness. The lecture design involved stages of analysis, exploration, primary micro-teaching, and secondary micro-teaching, with each stage including design, application, and evaluation. The TPACK-P survey was conducted before and after the lecture, and the results indicated a statistically significant difference in TCK at the 1% significance level and TPK, TRACK, and TRACK(P) at the 5% significance level. Further analysis using dependent sample t-tests showed that the post-test mean was significantly higher than the pre-test mean in categories such as TCK, TPK, TPACK, and TPACK(P). These findings suggest that the designed lecture positively affected the growth of pre-service mathematics teachers' TPACK-P.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.223-235
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• 2018

This literature review focuses on the history of research on elementary students' mathematics anxiety. The results of analysis shows the characteristics, measurement tools, causes and the treatments of mathematics anxiety. The purpose of this study is to provide analytical views of elementary students' mathematics anxiety to teachers, researchers and policymakers. I categorize the results of analysis according to the key words of literatures: (1) the relationship between mathematics anxiety and students' behavior (2) measurements of mathematics anxiety (3) the causes of mathematics anxiety and (4) the treatment of mathematics anxiety.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.173-194
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• 2010

This study examines the differences and similarities of mathematics teachers' subject matter knowledge among England, the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong. Data were collected from a ten-item test in the SKIMA subject matter audit instrument [Rowland, T.; Martyn, S.; Barber, P. & Heal, C. (2000). Primary teacher trainees' mathematics subject knowledge and classroom performance. In: T. Rowland & C. Morgan (eds.), Research in Mathematics Education, Volume 2 (pp.3-18). ME 2000e.03066] from over 500 participants. Results showed that participants from England performed consistently better, with those from Hong Kong being next and then followed by those from the Chinese mainland. The qualitative data revealed that participants from Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland were fluent in applying routines to solve problems, but had some difficulties in offering explanations or justifications.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2023

Over the last three decades, there has been an increasingly strong emphasis on group-centered approaches to mathematics teaching. One primary responsibility for teachers who use group-centered instruction is to "check in", or intervene, with groups to monitor group learning and provide mathematical support when necessary. While prior research has contributed valuable insight for successful teacher interventions in mathematics group work, there is a need for more fine-grained analyses of interactions between teachers and students. In this study, we co-conducted research with an exemplary middle grade teacher (Ms. Green) to learn about fine-grained details of her intervention practices, hoping to generate knowledge about successful teacher interventions that can be expanded, replicated, and/or contradicted in other contexts. Analyzing Ms. Green's practices as an exemplary case, we found that she used exceptionally short interventions (35 seconds on average), provided space for student dialogue, and applied four distinct strategies to support groups to make mathematical progress: (1) observing/listening before speaking; (2) using a combination of social and analytic scaffolds; (3) redirecting students to task instructions; (4) abruptly walking away. These findings imply that successful interventions may be characterized by brevity, shared dialogue between the teacher and students, and distinct (and sometimes unnatural) teaching moves.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.105-129
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• 2016

The elements of mathematical processes include mathematical reasoning, mathematical problem-solving, and mathematical communications. Proportion reasoning is a kind of mathematical reasoning which is closely related to the ratio and percent concepts. Proportion reasoning is the essence of primary mathematics, and a basic mathematical concept required for the following more-complicated concepts. Therefore, the study aims to analyze the proportion reasoning ability of sixth graders of primary school who have already learned the ratio and percent concepts. To allow teachers to quickly recognize and help students who have difficulty solving a proportion reasoning problem, this study analyzed the characteristics and patterns of proportion reasoning of sixth graders of primary school. The purpose of this study is to provide implications for learning and teaching of future proportion reasoning of higher levels. In order to solve these study tasks, proportion reasoning problems were developed, and a total of 22 sixth graders of primary school were asked to solve these questions for a total of twice, once before and after they learned the ratio and percent concepts included in the 2009 revised mathematical curricula. Students' strategies and levels of proportional reasoning were analyzed by setting up the four different sections and classifying and analyzing the patterns of correct and wrong answers to the questions of each section. The results are followings; First, the 6th graders of primary school were able to utilize various proportion reasoning strategies depending on the conditions and patterns of mathematical assignments given to them. Second, most of the sixth graders of primary school remained at three levels of multiplicative reasoning. The most frequently adopted strategies by these sixth graders were the fraction strategy, the between-comparison strategy, and the within-comparison strategy. Third, the sixth graders of primary school often showed difficulty doing relative comparison. Fourth, the sixth graders of primary school placed the greatest concentration on the numbers given in the mathematical questions.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.203-216
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• 2021

Seeing the elapsed time as a quantity that can be measured is quite challenging for students while making students see it is also challenging for teachers. Tuning on these challenges, this article reports on what learning opportunities elementary teachers provide when they teach elapsed time focusing on quantitative objectification. I observed three mathematics classrooms where the elapsed time was taught by three elementary teachers and did a narrative analysis on the instructions. All three teachers utilized certain tools to support students access to the elapsed time as a quantity. They appropriated various quantitative attributes of the tool. In the case of the analog clock, one teacher tried to quantification the elapsed time with the number of minute hand's turning, while the other teacher indicated the distance of minute hand's moving. One teacher represented the elapsed time with the longitudinal attribute of the time band. Standing on the findings, the didactical implications of various attempts for quantitative objectification of the elapsed time implemented were discussed.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.13-24
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• 2010

Mathematics educators oriented to reform-based curricular have asserted that mathematics teachers should lead instructions where all students in their classrooms are able to participated. In this paper, some practices for them to implement it are discussed. Before explaining them, some discussions are made about students ability to construct knowledge. One of them is that teachers should know different learners construct different understandings because of their differences of prior knowledge and reasoning ability. Also, it was discussed that teachers consider classroom environments, assigning children's sitting and tasks in the light of learning. The reason to state them is that perspectives of them should be changed. Finally, "Teacher's careful listening to learners' responses", "Why do think in that way?, How do you know?, What is it meant?", "accepting ideas from all learners", "no supporting a particular idea", "utilizing waiting time", and "teacher's responses to learner's errors and mistakes" are discussed as practices for letting all learners be participated in the mathematics instruction.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.81-109
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• 1999

This study aims to reflect the basic principles and teaching-teaming principles of Realistic Mathematics Education in order to suppose an way in which mathematics as an activity is carried out in primary school. The development of what is known as RME started almost thirty years ago. It is founded by Freudenthal and his colleagues at the former IOWO. Freudenthal stressed the idea of matheamatics as a human activity. According to him, the key principles of RME are as follows: guided reinvention and progressive mathematisation, level theory, and didactical phenomenology. This means that children have guided opportunities to reinvent mathematics by doing it and so the focal point should not be on mathematics as a closed system but on the process of mathematisation. There are different levels in learning process. One should let children make the transition from one level to the next level in the progress of mathematisation in realistic contexts. Here, contexts means that domain of reality, which in some particular learning process is disclosed to the learner in order to be mathematised. And the word of 'realistic' is related not just with the real world, but is related to the emphasis that RME puts on offering the students problem situations which they can imagine. Under the background of these principles, RME supposes the following five instruction principles: phenomenological exploration, bridging by vertical instruments, pupils' own constructions and productions, interactivity, and interwining of learning strands. In order to reflect how to realize these principles in practice, the teaming process of algorithms is illustrated. In this process, children follow a learning route that takes its inspiration from the history of mathematics or from their own informal knowledge and strategies. Considering long division, the first levee is associated with real-life activities such as sharing sweets among children. Here, children use their own strategies to solve context problems. The second level is entered when the same sweet problems is presented and a model of the situation is created. Then it is focused on finding shortcomings. Finally, the schema of division becomes a subject of investigation. Comparing realistic mathematics education with constructivistic mathematics education, there interaction, reflective thinking, conflict situation are many similarities but there are alsodifferences. They share the characteristics such as mathematics as a human activity, active learner, etc. But in RME, it is focused on the delicate balance between the spontaneity of children and the authority of teachers, and the development of long-term loaming process which is structured but flexible. In this respect two forms of mathematics education are different. Here, we learn how to develop mathematics curriculum that respects the theory of children on reality and at the same time the theory of mathematics experts. In order to connect the informal mathematics of children and formal mathematics, we need more teachers as researchers and more researchers as observers who try to find the mathematical informal notions of children and anticipate routes of children's learning through thought-experiment continuously.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.75-91
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• 2018

This study examines the educational meaning of the sum of the angles of a triangle in elementary school mathematics and discusses the introduction and explanation methods to convey the meaning faithfully. First, we investigated how to introduce the sum of the angles of a triangle in the Korean national mathematics curriculums from the past to the present and surveyed the experiences and opinions of the teachers. The results of the survey are summarized and discussed in three parts: The context of 'arranging angles activities' and 'measuring angles activities', the methods to convey the meaning of the sum of the angles of a triangle as an invariance, and other details.