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

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.45 no.1 s.112
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• pp.61-74
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• 2006

The ability of understanding the number and number systems, grasping the properties of number systems, and manipulating number systems is the foundation to understand algebra. It is useful to deepen students' mathematical understanding of number systems and operations. The authentic understanding of numbers and operations can make it possible for the students to manipulate algebraic symbols, to represent relationship among sets of numbers, and to use variables to investigate the properties of sets of numbers. The high school students need to understand the number systems from more abstract perspective. The purpose of this study is to study on understanding and application ability of eleventh graders of basic properties of operations with real numbers.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.499-518
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to examine the preservice secondary mathematics teachers understanding and dimensions of knowledge about definition of irrational numbers and irrational numbers and operations. I adopted a framework consisting of formal dimensions, intuitive numbers, algorithmic dimentions suggested by Tirosh et al.(1998) by adding instrumental dimension for his study. I surveyed 65 preservice secondary mathematics teachers who are in bachelor program and post-bachelor program for teacher certificate by using a questionnaire suggested by Sirotic and Zazkis(2007). The results of this study suggest that 83.1% of the participants gave correct answers in definitions of irrational numbers. 43% of the preservice secondary teachers gave correct answers in adding with irrational numbers. Also 91% of the preservice teachers gave correct answers in multiplying irrational numbers. The preservice teachers appeared to understand irrational numbers and operations at formal dimension. More than half of the preservice teachers gave incorrect answers in adding irrational numbers and a few participants gave incorrect in multiplying irrational numbers. The preservice teachers seemed to understand irrational numbers and operations at intuitive or instrumental dimension. The results also suggest that the preservice secondary mathematics teachers have incorrect understanding about irrational numbers.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.56 no.2
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• pp.131-145
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• 2017

The representation of irrational numbers has a key role in the learning of irrational numbers. However, transparent and finite representation of irrational numbers does not exist in school mathematics context. Therefore, many students have difficulties in understanding irrational numbers as an 'Object'. For this reason, this research explored how mathematics textbooks affected to students' understanding of irrational numbers in the view of process and object. Specifically we analyzed eight textbooks based on current curriculum and used framework based on previous research. In order to supplement the result derived from textbook analysis, we conducted questionnaires on 42 middle school students. The questions in the questionnaires were related to the representation and calculation of irrational numbers. As a result of this study, we found that mathematics textbooks develop contents in order of process-object, and using 'non repeating decimal', 'numbers cannot be represented as a quotient', 'numbers with the radical sign', 'number line' representation for irrational numbers. Students usually used a representation of non-repeating decimal, although, they used a representation of numbers with the radical sign when they operate irrational numbers. Consequently, we found that mathematics textbooks affect students to understand irrational numbers as a non-repeating irrational numbers, but mathematics textbooks have a limitation to conduce understanding of irrational numbers as an object.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.1-31
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• 2007

Negative numbers have been one of the most difficult mathematical concepts, and it was only 200 years ago that they were recognized as a real object of mathematics by mathematicians. It was because it took more than 1500 years for human beings to overcome the quantitative notion of numbers and recognize the formality in negative numbers. Understanding negative numbers as formal ones resulted from the Copernican conversion in mathematical way of thinking. we first investigated the historic and the genetic process of the concept of negative numbers. Second, we analyzed the conceptual fields of negative numbers in the aspect of the additive and multiplicative structure. Third, we inquired into the levels of thinking on the concept of negative numbers on the basis of the historical and the psychological analysis in order to understand the formal concept of negative numbers. Fourth, we analyzed Korean mathematics textbooks on the basis of the thinking levels of the concept of negative numbers. Fifth, we investigated and analysed the levels of students' understanding of the concept of negative numbers. Sixth, we analyzed the symbolizing process in the development of mathematical concept. Futhermore, we tried to show a concrete way to teach the formality of the negative numbers concepts on the basis of such theoretical analyses.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.291-319
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to investigate students' thinking and understanding through working on Worked-out Examples on numbers and operations, specifically, radical and real numbers and operations in the middle grades. For this purpose, we developed a set of Worked-out Examples; middle school students independently worked on them. Then two students were interviewed. These data were analyzed by using the framework of mathematical proficiency. The data analysis suggested that the students seemed to go through the processes involving a combination of understanding and computation, computation and reasoning, and understanding, computation and reasoning. Also, it appeared that most of the students have difficult solving problems involving with radical and real numbers in related to strategic competence.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.545-560
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of traditional fairy tales on the basic understanding of economics and numbers for 4 year old preschoolers. The subjects were 20 children at one education center located in Seoul: Among them, 10 were in the experimental group and 10 were in the control group, based on random selection. The program for economic education was conducted for eight weeks; two times each week for the experimental group, while a general curriculum was conducted with several traditional fairy tale books related to economic education were given to the control group. The preschoolers' basic understanding of economics and numbers was examined using the scales of Park(2008) and Choi(2003). Collected data was analyzed by t-test and ANCOVA using SPSS 17.0 program. The results were as follows: there were significant differences in the understanding of economics and numbers according to economic education based on traditional fairy tales respectively. In conclusion, it is necessary to conduct a scientific study in order to develop an economic education program. Also, various activities were discussed to use the economic program for preschoolers.

• School Mathematics
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.209-228
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• 2017

Understanding decimal numbers is important in mathematics as well as real-life contexts. However, lots of students focus on procedures or algorithms of decimal numbers without understanding its meanings. This study analyzed teaching method related to decimal numbers in a series of mathematics textbooks of Korea, Japan, Singapore and the US. The results showed that three countries except Japan introduced the decimal numbers as another name of fraction, which highlights the relation between the concept of decimal numbers and fractions. And limited meanings of decimal numbers were shown such as 'equal parts of a whole' and 'measurement'. Especially in the korean textbooks, relationships between the decimals were dealt instrumentally and small number of models such as number lines or $10{\times}10$ grids were used repeatedly. Based these results, this study provides implications on what and how to deal with decimal numbers in teaching and learning decimal numbers with textbooks.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.7
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• pp.920-932
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• 2010

Many topics in science, especially, abstract concepts, relationships, properties, entities in invisible ranges, are described in mathematical representations such as formula, numbers, symbols, and graphs. Although the mathematical representation is an essential tool to better understand scientific phenomena, the mathematical element is pointed out as a reason for learning difficulty and losing interests in science. In order to further investigate the relationship between mathematics knowledge and science understanding, the current study examined 793 high school students' understanding of the pH value. As a measure of the molar concentration of hydrogen ions in the solution, the pH value is an appropriate example to explore what a student mathematical structure of logarithm is and how they interpret the proportional relationship of numbers for scientific explanation. To the end, students were asked to write their responses on a questionnaire that is composed of nine content domain questions and four affective domain questions. Data analysis of this study provides information for the relationship between student understanding of the pH value and related mathematics knowledge.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.25-55
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• 2003

In the school mathematics, the negative numbers have been instructed by means of intuitive models(concrete situation models, number line model, colour counter model), inductive-extrapolation approach, and the formal approach using the inverse operation relations. These instructions on the negative numbers have caused students to have the difficulty in understanding especially why the rules of signs hold. It is due to the fact that those models are complicated, inconsistent, and incomplete. So, students usually should memorize the sign rules. In this study we studied on the didactical phenomenology of the negative numbers as a foundational study for the improvement of teaching negative numbers. First, we analysed the formal nature of the negative numbers and the cognitive obstructions which have showed up in the historic-genetic process of them. Second, we investigated what the middle school students know about the negative numbers and their operations, which they have learned according to the current national curriculum. The results showed that the degree they understand the reasons why the sign rules hold was low Third, we instructed the middle school students about the negative number and its operations using the formal approach as Freudenthal suggest ed. And we investigated whether students understand the formal approach or not. And we analysed the validity of the new teaching method of the negative numbers. The results showed that students didn't understand the formal approach well. And finally we discussed the directions for improving the instruction of the negative numbers on the ground of these didactical phenomenological analysis.