• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.383-397
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• 2008

In problem solving, the necessity of mathematical thinking is absolute. In this paper, with an established theory about mathematical thinking, we will try to observe how the students can form mathematical thinking through a mathematical example in mathematical class by using Lakatos' process of proofs and refutations.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.527-540
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• 2007

It takes much of times and efforts for mathematical knowledge to be regarded as truth. Mathematical knowledge has been added, and modified, and even proved to be false. Mathematical knowledge consists of mathematical languages, statements, reasonings, questions, metamathematical views. These elements have been changed constantly by investigations and refutations of mathematicians, by modification of proofs considering the refutations, by introduction of new concepts, by additions of questions about new concepts, by efforts to get answers to new questions, by attempts to apply previous studies to the present, constantly. This study introduces the change of mathematical knowledge instituted by filcher, and presents examples of the change.

• School Mathematics
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.55-70
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to implement Lakatos method in the teaching and learning of geometry for middle school students. In his landmark book , Lakatos suggested the following instructional approach: an initial conjecture was produced, attempts were made to prove the conjecture, the proofs were repeatedly refuted by counterexamples, and finally more improved conjectures and refined proofs were suggested. In the study, students were selected from the high achieving students who participated in the special mathematics and science program offered by the city council of Seoul. The students were given a contradictory geometric proposition, and expected to find the cause of the fallacy. The students successfully identified the fallacy following the Lakatos method. In this process they also set up a primitive conjecture and this conjecture was justified by the proof and refutation method. Some implications were drawn from the result of the study.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.143-156
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• 2004

Lakatos's mathematical philosophy implies that the mathematical knowledge is quasi-empirical and provides the context where mathematics grows and develops. So, it is educationally significant. But, it is not easy to apply Lakatos's methodology to teaching elementary mathematics, because Lakatos's logic of the mathematical discovery is based on the proofs and refutations but elementary mathematics does not contain any proof. This study is to develop the schemes that apply Lakatos's methodology to teaching elementary mathematics and to provide the teaching examples. I devised the teaching process and the curriculum development method. And I developed the teaching examples.

• School Mathematics
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.353-373
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• 2005

The purpose of this paper is to analysis the basic network problem which can be applied to the mathematically gifted students in elementary school. Mainly, we discuss didactic transpositions of the double counting principle, the game of sprouts, Eulerian graph problem, and the minimum connector problem. Here the double counting principle is related to the handshaking lemma; in any graph, the sum of all the vertex-degree is equal to the number of edges. The selection of these subjects are based on the viewpoint; to familiar to graph theory, to raise algorithmic thinking, to apply to the real-world problem. The theoretical background of didactic transpositions of these subjects are based on the Polya's mathematical heuristics and Lakatos's philosophy of mathematics; quasi-empirical, proofs and refutations as a logic of mathematical discovery.