• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.55 no.1
• /
• pp.1-19
• /
• 2016

Given the importance of understanding the equal sign in developing early algebraic thinking, this paper investigated how a total of 695 students in grades 2~6 understood the equal sign. The students completed a questionnaire with three types of items (equation structure, equal sign definition, and open equation solving) based on the construct map by four different levels of understanding the equal sign. The questionnaire was analyzed by Rasch model. The results showed that about 80% of the students were at least Level 3 which means a basic relational understanding of the equal sign. However, the success rates varied across grades and it was noticeable that about 70% of the second graders remained at Level 1 or 2 which maintains an operational understanding of the equal sign. The results of item types demonstrated that item difficulty for the advanced relational thinking was the highest and this is the same even for the Level 4 students. This paper is expected to investigate elementary school students' understanding of the equal sign and provide implications of how to deal with the equal sign in the elementary school.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.19 no.2
• /
• pp.57-74
• /
• 2000

Students' concepts of scientific phenomena have become a point of focus in science education research. This study investigated into developmental process and mechanism of the students' respiration concept through a cross-age study. This study utilized the 1st, 3rd, 6th grade elementary students to find out changes in student's understanding of the concept of respiration. The 1st and 3rd grade level students were interviewed what the respiration mean and whether each of living things respires, etc. The 6th grade students were interviewed and tested. Respiration is a word that students come across often in everyday life. It was found that they were more likely to associate respiration with its more common concept of breathing or gas exchange as opposed to its more scientific definition as the process in which nutrients are oxidized to provide energy. This trend didn't improve as they advanced grade. This is an indication that the knowledge system of student is split into a generic knowledge system and scientific knowledge system. Understanding of concept increased and differentiated across grade levels but that understanding was limited. They overcome their tendency to base their understanding of respiration on their understanding of human phenomena and learn to integrate their understanding of biological phenomena through a one organ - one role type of logic. They also intuitively explain everything based on their own experience.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.41 no.5
• /
• pp.520-530
• /
• 2020

The purpose of this study was to investigate students' understanding of the terms presented on the information board in the Jinan-Muju National Geopark. To this end, a survey was conducted with 219 students (147 elementary, 41 middle, and 31 high school students) to determine the level of their perceptions of the geopark, and of the usefulness of the information board, and their understanding of the terms presented on the information boards of the National Geopark. To determine the students' understanding of terms, 10 representative information boards were selected and the entire content was converted into text. Afterwards, 256 key terms were extracted from the text through discussions with three experts, and these terms were presented to students to grasp their level of understanding. The results were as follows: First, the level of students' perceptions about the geopark was very low, so publicity and educational approaches are needed. Second, students were not interested in the information board and had a low level of understanding owing to the large amount of information and reading difficulties. Third, among the 256 terms, the number of terms that students found difficult to understand tended to decrease with increasing school grade: 80 for elementary school students, 53 for middle school students, and 31 for high school students. The reason the students had difficulty in understanding terms was that elementary school students had not yet learned the terms in the curriculum, whereas middle and high school students have difficulty understanding technical terms and Chinese characters. Therefore, the information board in the geopark will need to be easily translated into Chinese characters or additional explanations of technical terms need to be provided so that visitors can understand the concepts more easily.

• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.51 no.1
• /
• pp.21-45
• /
• 2012

The purpose of the study was to investigate how students understand each operations with whole numbers and fractions, and the relationship between their knowledge of operations with whole numbers and conceptual understanding of operations on fractions. Researchers categorized students' understanding of operations with whole numbers and fractions based on their semantic structure of these operations, and analyzed the relationship between students' understanding of operations with whole numbers and fractions. As the results, some students who understood multiplications with whole numbers as only situations of "equal groups" did not properly conceptualize multiplications of fractions as they interpreted wrongly multiplying two fractions as adding two fractions. On the other hand, some students who understood multiplications with whole numbers as situations of "multiplicative comparison" appropriately conceptualize multiplications of fractions. They naturally constructed knowledge of fractions as they build on their prior knowledge of whole numbers compared to other students. In the case of division, we found that some students who understood divisions with whole numbers as only situations of "sharing" had difficulty in constructing division knowledge of fractions from previous division knowledge of whole numbers.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
• /
• v.27 no.6
• /
• pp.1764-1782
• /
• 2015

The purpose of this study is to investigate the understanding on the acid-base, acid rain and soil acidification of the elementary students. The participants in the current study were 280 6th graders from a elementary school in Gyeongnam Province. A questionnaire consists of four categories: understanding of (a) acid-base basic knowledge, (b) acid rain and (c) soil acidification. (d) In addition, students were asked to comment about the introduction of the acid rain experiment in the science textbook. The results are as follows; First, the results regarding acid-base basic knowledge. They know the classification, characteristics, and properties of acid-based solutions well but they don't know the acid-base neutralization, examples using properties and application in real life. Second, the results regarding acid rain, students know the definition and damage of acid rain but they don't know the causing substances, emission source and way of solution of acid rain for lack of knowledge. Third, the results regarding soil acidification was the well-known part for the students because they had continued learning about the soil from the lesson of acid rain. Also, we looked into the difference in gender and region about the understanding of acid-base, acid rain and soil acidification. According to the gender of the data about the understanding of acid-base, acid rain and soil acidification, the percentage of correct answers of female was higher than male's. Also we expected that urban students were higher than rural students on the understanding of acid-base, acid rain and soil acidification, but the understanding of urban students were similar to rural students. Fourth, we got positive answers and negative answers to the introduction of acid rain experiment. Most of the positive opinion were I want to know a lot acid rain experiment", followed by "It is possible to prevent the risk of the damage and It seems to having fun and new order. Most of the negative opinion were Acid rain experiment may be difficult and complicated followed by Just a theory in the book is enough, Acid rain experiment were boring and not fun, Acid rain experiment is dangerous, There are many to study in this order.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
• /
• v.5 no.1
• /
• pp.111-122
• /
• 2002

The purpose of this study was to examine high school second graders' understanding of the basic nature of logarithm, the major type of error they made about logarithmic function and the cause of such an error, and to seek ways to instruct it better. For that purpose, three research questions were posed: 1. Investigate how much high school students in their second year comprehend the nature of logarithm. 2. Analyze what type of error they make about logarithmic function. 3. Analyze the cause of their error according to the selected error models and how it could be taught more efficiently. The findings of this study were as below: First, the natural science students had a better understanding of the basic nature of logarithm than the academic students. What produced the widest gap between the two groups' understanding was applying the nature of logarithm to the given problems, and what caused the smallest gap was the definition of logarithm and the condition of base. Second, the academic students had a poorer understanding of the basic nature of logarithmic function graph and of applying the nature of logarithm to the given problems. Third, the natural science students didn't comprehend well the basic nature of logarithmic function graph, the nature of characteristics and mantissa. Fourth, for all the students from academic and natural science courses, the most common errors were caused by the poor understanding of theorem or nature of the ［E4] model. Fifth, the academic students made more frequent errors due to the unfamiliar signs of the ［El］ model, the imperfect understanding of theorem or nature of the ［E4］ model, and the technical part of the ［E6］ model. Sixth, the natural science students made more frequent errors because of the improper problem interpretation of the ［E2］ model and the logically improper inference of the ［E3］ model.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.71-91
• /
• 2004

For the education of scientifically gifted high-school students in the field of relativity, we have executed a research on the understanding of relativistic concepts through the case study of its students of Busan Science Academy appointed as a high school for the gifted education in science. We showed the analysis of the changes in students, understanding in the field of (special) relativity and their possible causes. The comparison of the pre-test and the post-test tends to support that the students attained better understanding through the instruction of relativity. Students' understanding and misconception of relativistic concepts were also investigated through the case study. The students showed low degree of understanding in the validity of the principle of relativity, the influence of the constancy of the speed of light on the classical physics, etc. It seems that the analysis of these concepts of insufficient understanding can make a contribution to designing the education of relativity for scientifically gifted students.

• Research in Mathematical Education
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.63-78
• /
• 2013

Trigonometric ratios are difficult concepts to teach and learn in middle school. One of the reasons is that the mathematical terms (sine, cosine, tangent) don't convey the idea literally. This paper deals with the understanding of a concept from the learner's standpoint, and searches the orientation of teaching that make students to have full understanding of trigonometric ratios. Such full understanding contains at least five constructs as follows: skill-algorithm, property-proof, use-application, representation-metaphor, history-culture understanding [Usiskin, Z. (2012). What does it mean to understand some mathematics? In: Proceedings of ICME12, COEX, Seoul Korea; July 8-15,2012 (pp. 502-521). Seoul, Korea: ICME-12]. Despite multi-aspects of understanding, especially, the history-culture aspect is not yet a part of the mathematics class on the trigonometric ratios. In this respect this study investigated the effect of history approach on students' understanding when the history approach focused on the mathematical terms is used to teach the concept of trigonometric ratios in Grade 9 mathematics class. As results, the experimental group obtained help in more full understanding on the trigonometric ratios through such teaching than the control group. This implies that the historical derivation of mathematical terms as well as the context of mathematical concepts should be dealt in the math class for the more full understanding of some mathematical concepts.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.117-136
• /
• 2012

The goal of this study is to investigate a didactic transposition method of text books and high school students' understanding for the Normal Distribution. To accomplish this goal, framework descriptors were developed to analyse the didactic transposition method and interpret the students' understanding based on the Historico-Genetic process of the Normal Distribution, the meaning of the Normal Distribution as a scholarly knowledge and the results of previous studies on students' understanding for the Normal Distribution. This study presented several recommendations for instruction of the Normal Distribution according to the results of analysing the didactic transposition method and interpreting the students' understanding in terms of the developed framework.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
• /
• v.28 no.6
• /
• pp.1529-1548
• /
• 2016

The objective of this study is to explore an effect of class teaching method of utilizing a pictogram on understanding of safety terms by the Hearing Impaired students. For this objective, a class teaching utilizing a pictogram was performed by targeting 4 students (elementary school 6th graders)with auditory disability for app. 3 months during the period from July, 2015 to September and through repeated measurement, an effect of class teaching utilizing pictogram on their understanding of safety terms was analyzed. The result of this study is as follows. First, class teaching utilizing pictogram was effective for enhancing understanding of safety terms. Second, such teaching was effective for promoting interest in safety terms. Through these results, it could be concluded that such teaching method provided an opportunity of enhancing understanding of the students with auditory disability for safety terms. In addition, the result of this study implies that pictogram teaching method being designed to deliver the meaning of target easily and promptly becomes a major factor of exerting a positive influence on understanding of safety terms by the students with auditory disability.