• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.259-281
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• 2016

Teaching practicum plays a significant role in teacher education program because it provides pre-service teachers with an opportunity to apply what they have learned to the actual teaching contexts. As such, it needs to be conducted in terms of close collaboration between university and school. Given that, in a mathematics methods course the prospective teachers in this study had an opportunity to discuss mathematics lessons they had implemented during their teaching practicum. This paper analyzed in what ways prospective teachers' comments on elementary mathematics instruction were changed through this experience. The results of this study showed that in late comment the teachers tended to focus more on mathematical discourse, consider not only the teacher of the lesson but also students, and suggest alternative approaches on the classroom events they had noticed. It is noticeable that the results analyzed by researchers were consistent with prospective teachers' self-assessment. Building on these results, this paper provides implications of teacher preparation programs to enhance prospective teachers' ability to analyze elementary mathematics lessons.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.201-208
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to analyze the structure and type of prospective elementary school teachers' scientific hypotheses generated on zoological tasks. The subjects were 18 prospective elementary school teachers. Four zoological hypothesis generation tasks were developed and administered to the subjects. After being presented with the zoological situations of the tasks, the subjects were asked to generate causal questions and scientific hypotheses. The scientific hypotheses were analyzed by the inductive approach. The results of this study showed that the hypotheses contained explicans and explicanda. The explicans were divided into two parts: 'what' and 'how'. In some cases, additional explanations were attached to the 'what' section. In addition, the hypotheses were classified into 9 types. The number of explicanda, the pattern of explicans, and the number of explicans were used as criteria for classification purposes. This study also discussed the implications of these findings for future directions in teaching and teaming in science education.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.145-160
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• 2012

Prospective teachers need to have an opportunity to critically examine their initial perception with regard to effective mathematics instruction during the teacher education period. This study analyzed the perception in relation to good mathematics instruction by a total of 265 prospective teachers from four institutes for elementary teacher education using a survey. The results of this study showed that the pre-service teachers regarded learner, teaching and learning method, selection of content, and construction of curriculum as important for high-quality mathematics instruction. However, they revealed relatively low levels of agreement against the importance of instructional materials, classroom environment and atmosphere, and assessment. On the basis of teachers' perception on each element of effective mathematics instruction, this paper raises issues for discussion and includes some implications for teacher education.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.399-424
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• 2014

Although teacher preparation programs are important for prospective teachers to build a foundation of teaching expertise, there has been lack of research in this area. This paper analyzed in what ways prospective teachers' ability in describing and commenting on elementary mathematics instruction has been changed while they were taking in the course of teaching elementary school mathematics. The results of this study showed that in late description the teachers tended to notice the core flow of a lesson and the use of instructional strategies appropriate to the mathematical content to be taught. They also tended to comment on instructional strategies and mathematical discourse from the teacher's perspective and evaluated them without alternative approaches. A noticeable change occurred in late comments wherein prospective teachers considered both the teacher and students, supported their comments by theories they had learned through the course, and interpreted the classroom events they had noticed. Building on these results, this paper closes with implications of teacher education programs to enhance prospective teachers' ability to analyze elementary mathematics lessons.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.678-691
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• 2016

This study intends to explore the characteristics of prospective teachers with a qualitative study based on the experience of students. To that end, the classes of prospective teachers and experienced teachers were compared through the students with focus on PE class. Practicum is the first teaching experience of prospective teachers and there are many related studies. However, there are few studies contributing to the reflective introspection of prospective teachers based on the experience of students. Thus, this study intends to promote their reflective introspection on their practicum, the first teaching experience. It was revealed that the majority of students find the prospective teachers' class less helpful than the class of experienced teachers. The detailed findings are as follows. First, the students find that prospective teachers only focus on the textbook and materials they have prepared. Second, most students find that prospective teachers do not consider the level of students as they focus on the textbook only. Third, most students find the class of prospective students uninteresting. Fourth, most students find that prospective teachers are unable to help students acquire various functions easily. The findings show that the majority of students find the prospective teachers' classes are inadequate. It implies that prospective teachers do not gain effective teaching skills at their universities (college of education). Prospective teachers should identify their areas of improvement based on their student experience.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.257-272
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• 2014

This paper examines and presents descriptions of 12 prospective primary teachers' views on the nature of mathematics in USA. All the participants were elementary teacher candidates enrolled in the same mathematics method courses. Interview data show that the prospective primary teachers possess two kinds of views on the nature of mathematics: primarily traditional and even mix of traditional and nontraditional beliefs in terms of Raymond's (1997) belief criteria. Implications for teacher education were discussed at the end of the paper.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.625-647
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• 2015

How a pre-service teacher understands and comments on mathematics instruction can serve as the foundation of her teaching expertise. Given that prospective teachers observe demonstrative mathematics teaching implemented by an in-service teacher and make a comment on it during their practicum period, this paper specified the levels of their ability in commenting on mathematics instruction and explored the characteristics of such levels. It is significant that this paper provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis of such levels in terms of topic, agent, stance, evidence, and alternative perspective. The results of this study showed that the commenting levels may be classified by Level 1 (fragmentary), Level 2 (inspective), and Level 3 (analytical), and that the most frequent level of this study was at Level 2. Multiple regression analysis demonstrated that stance is the most influential in determining the levels of comments among their analytic components. An analysis of the participants' anecdotes showed that the experience of observing demonstrative teaching during the practicum may have impact on the belief of mathematics instruction and self-image as a teacher. Building on these results, this paper provides implications of teacher preparation programs to enhance prospective teachers' ability to analyze elementary mathematics lessons.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2019

In this study, prospective teachers were involved in arranging the teaching sequence of multiplication and division of fractions and decimal numbers based on their experience and knowledge of school mathematics. As a result, these activities provided an opportunity to demonstrate the prospective teachers' perception. Prospective teachers were able to learn the knowledge they needed by identifying the differences between their perceptions and curriculum. In other words, prospective teachers were able to understand the mathematical relationships inherent in the teaching sequence of multiplication and division of fractions and decimal numbers and the importance and difficulty of identifying students' prior knowledge and the effects of productive failures as teaching methods.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.45-61
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• 2023

Number talks as a brief instructional routine benefits students and teachers. In general, the routines consist of four steps- introducing, posing questions, collecting answers, sharing ideas. This paper focuses on the sharing ideas step in which multiple strategies are shared by students because teachers sometimes do not know what to do with these multiple ideas. One way is to support students to engage in comparison given that teachers are expected to support students to compare strategies in number talks. This paper explores whether and how 15 prospective teachers supported students in their practicum classroom to compare different strategies in their enacted number talk. In this paper, 15 videos of number talks enacted by the prospective teachers were collected. Analyzing the videos produced multiple episodes in relation to comparing strategies, including 1) where prospective teachers created pre-conditions for comparison, 2) where they invited students for comparison, 3) where they pressed students to compare, and 4) where they offered their own way to compare. There were two patterns that might limit the potential of having multiple strategies as conditions for comparison. Additionally, this paper found that even though the prospective teachers missed opportunities to support students to compare different strategies, there were two ways for teachers to support students to engage in comparison. These findings can be used for mathematics teacher educators to support prospective teachers.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.317-328
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• 2011

We analyzed errors committed by Korean prospective elementary teachers in finding and interpreting quotient and remainder within measurement division of fractions. 65 prospective elementary teachers were participated in this study. They solved a word problem about measurement division of fractions. We analyzed solutions of all participants, and interviewed 5 participants of them. The results reveal many of these prospective teachers could not tell what fractional part of division result means. Thses results suggest that teacher preparation program should emphasize interpreting calculation results within given situations.