• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.123-135
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• 2008

This study analysed the schemata which are requisite to understand and prove examples of mathematical induction, and examined students' construction of the schemata. We verified that the construction of implication-valued function schema and modus ponens schema needs function schema and proposition-valued function schema, and needs synthetic coordination for successive mathematical induction schema. Given this background, we establish $1{\sim}4$ levels for students' understanding of the mathematical induction. Further, we analysed cognitive difficulties of students who studying mathematical induction in connection with these understanding levels.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.141-161
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• 2009

Mathematical Communication ability can be more developed through sharing thoughts with others. Therefore when we instruct students in math, it is very important for teachers to provide them with opportunity to communicate mathematically. So this study provided open-ended problems in small-group collaborative learning. And we analyzed students' mathematical communication focused on the student's level of understanding. Furthermore, to improve students' mathematical communication ability, this study tries to attract the factors that we should consider the exact date for inserting the open-ended problems into a course of math and the student's level of understanding for selecting suitable open-ended problems.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.949-974
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• 2010

The purpose of the study was to investigate how students' understanding was formed for solving the algebra problems involving parameters in a computer algebra environment. The teaching experiment has been conducted with 6 high school students. As a result, students studied the parameter in different roles such as placeholder, changing quantity, unknown and generalizer. The results indicate that a computer algebra environment offers opportunities for algebra activities that may support the development of understanding of the concept of parameter.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.205-217
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• 2011

This study analyzed the reading materials presented in the existing 'Experiment Observation' targeting 31 elementary school students and conducted a preliminary investigation to examine the cause which makes the science reading materials of elementary school difficult to read. Also, on the basis of a preliminary investigation, this study developed the reading materials on science. After that, by examining the degree of understanding about existing reading materials on 'Experiment Observation' targeting 55 students of elementary schools and the newly developed reading materials targeting 44 students of elementary schools, the study proved its effect. As the result of the study, the causes for which students felt difficulty in reading were as follows: the scientific or non-scientific terms were explained by using more higher levels of Chinese characters compared to the levels of students; the scientific terms never treated in the classroom were used in the reading materials without any explanation; the overall structure of existing reading materials was distracted and listed the fragments of information, and the sentences were described complicatedly; the contents of a text and the photo materials were not connected functionally. In addition, the newly developed science reading materials were preferred by students because more various methods were devised, such as more systematic structure, arrangements of simpler sentence structure, additional explanation of scientific terms, divisions of paragraphs and postscript and their understanding was found to be improved.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.707-719
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• 1999

This article studies the understanding of acid and base concepts of the 3rd-grade students in middle school. An effective teaching strategy for improving their acid and base concepts was designed by considering students' prior knowledge using Lawson's learning cycle method. The control group was adapted by the traditional teaching strategy which isn't considering students' prior knowledge. After the class, understanding of acid and base concepts of treatment group was significantly higher than that of control group. But the level of students' understanding of strong acid, weak acid strong base and the strength of acid in aqueous solution was low even after the class of two groups. This indicates indirectly that the microscopic views of acid and base concepts in aqueous solution are not easy to learn for these students. For the four categories of acid and base concepts, students' responses were reviewed carefully and classified into scientific conceptions and misconceptions. These results will be useful for developing an effective teaching strategy of acid and base concepts.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-36
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• 1999

The case of four classrooms analyzed in this study point to many commonalities in the challenges of reforming mathematics teaching in Korea and the U. S. In both national contexts we have seen the need fur a clear distinction between implementing new student-centered social practices in the classroom, and providing significant new loaming opportunities for students. In particular, there is an important need to distinguish between attending to the social practices of the classroom and attending to students conceptual development within those social practices. In both countries, teachers in the less successful student-centered classes tended to abdicate responsibility fur sense making to the students. They were more inclined to attend to the literal statements of their students without analyzing their conceptual understanding (Episodes KA5 and UP 2). This is easy to do when the rhetoric of reform emphasizes student-centered social practices without sufficient attention to psychological correlates of those social practices. The more successful teachers tended to monitor the understanding of the students and to take proactive measures to ensure the development of that understanding (Episodes KO5 and UN3). This suggests the usefulness of constructivism as a model (or successful student-centered instruction. As Simon(1995) observed, constructivist teachers envision a hypothetical learning trajectory that constitutes their plan and expectation for students learning from the particular if the trajectory is being followed. If not, the teacher adjusts or supplements the task to obtain a more satisfactory result, or reconsider her or his assumptions concerning the hypothetical learning trajectory. In this way, the teacher acts proactively to try to ensure that students are progressing in their understanding in particular ways. Thus the more successful student-centered teacher of this study can be seen as constructivist in their orientation to student conceptual development, in comparison to the less successful student-centered teachers. It is encumbant on the authors of reform in Korea and the U. S. to make sure that reform is not trivialized, or evaluated only on the surface of classroom practices. The commonalities of the two reform endeavores suggest that Korea and the U. S. have much to share with each other in the challenges of reforming mathematics teaching for the new millennium.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.284-299
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to investigate elementary school students' conceptions about the energy represented in the integrated theme 'Energy and life' of the 2015 revised science curriculum. The instruments were developed to grasp students' understanding about 'the concepts of energy,' 'forms of energy,' 'conversion of energy,' and 'energy use of plants and animals.' The surveys were conducted on 92 elementary school students in Seoul. The students' answers were analyzed by descriptive statistics, clouds and semantic network analysis. The results are as follows: 'Electricity' and 'electric energy' were most frequently mentioned as the associated concepts to energy and forms of energy, respectively. Also, the daily use of energy was mixed to the use in science. According to conceptual hierarchy, understanding of energy conversion was dependent on the understanding of energy forms. Although students have basic concepts about the energy use of plants and animals, they had some misconceptions and lack of understanding. The educational implications were discussed to teach 'Energy and Life' as integrated theme in new elementary school curriculum.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.600-608
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• 2011

The ultimate goal of instruction is for learners to understand contents they have to learn in class. Therefore, shedding light is needed on the characteristics of understanding required by teachers and perceived by students when class is conducted for the purpose of understanding. To do this, 87 middle school teachers were requested to write down questions they asked to improve the understanding of learners in 'reproduction and genesis' unit. They were categorized according to Wiggins & McTighe's six aspects of understanding and a questionnaire was developed based on the data. A survey was conducted on 90 teachers and 370 ninth-grade students. The findings of this study were as follows: First, the teachers demanded explaining, interpreting and perspective a lot, but applying, empathy and self-knowledge were scarcely required. Second, the teachers demanded explaining the most, and the students as well. The next aspect of understanding in both groups was interpreting, followed by perspective, applying, empathy and self-knowledge. There were significant differences among the opinions of the students according to gender (p<0.05). Third, the students persevered explaining, applying and self-knowledge the same way as the teachers demanded, but not for interpreting, perspective and empathy. This study is expected to provide some information to achieve the instruction objectives of understanding successfully.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.81-96
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• 2002

This article describes a research project that examined the impact of hand-held technology on students' understanding linear equations and graphs in multiple representations. The results indicated that students in the graphing-approach classes were significantly better at the components of interpreting. No significant differences between the graphing-approach and traditional classes were found fur translation, modeling, and algebraic skills. Further, students in the graphing-approach classes showed significant improvements in their attitudes toward mathematics and technology, were less anxious about mathematics, and rated their class as more interesting and valuable.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.54-57
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• 2014

This paper investigated the influence of foreign words, otherwise known as loan words, on global communication abilities of university students from two non English-speaking countries: Korea and Japan. To survey the understanding and usage of foreign words which are from English language and used frequently in daily conversation, questionnaires were administered to Korean and Japanese university students majoring in engineering who shared similar linguistic backgrounds. The results were analyzed from global communication viewpoint. Based on the results, methods for improving global communication skills in engineering education were proposed.