A Study on the Visual Representation in Mathematics Education

수학교육에서 시각적 표현에 관한 소고

Visual representation is very important topic in Mathematics Education since it fosters understanding of Mathematical concepts, principles and rules and helps to solve the problem. So, the purpose of this paper is to analyze and clarify the various meaning and roles about the visual representation. For this purpose, I examine the status of the visual representation. Since the visual representation has the roles of creatively mathematical activity, we emphasize the using of the visual representation in teaching and learning. Next, I examine the errors in relation to the visual representation which come from limitation of the visual representation. It suggests that students have to know conceptual meaning of the visual representation when they use the visual representation. Finally, I suggest some examples of problem solving via the visual representation. This examples clarify that the visual representation gives the clues and solution of problem solving. Students can apprehend intuitively and easily the mathematical concepts, principles and rules using the visual representation because of its properties of finiteness and concreteness. So, mathematics teachers create the various visual representations and show students them. Moreover, mathematics teachers ask students to design the visual representation and teach students to understand the conceptual meaning of the visual representation.