• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.273-289
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• 2001

Given that the culture of the mathematics classroom has been perceived as an important topic in mathematics education research, this paper deals with the construct of sociomathematical norms which can be used as an analytical tool in understanding classroom mathematical culture. This paper first reviews the theoretical foundations of the construct such as symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology, and describes the actual classroom contexts in which social and sociomathematical norms were originally identified. This paper then provides a critical analysis of the previous studies with regard to sociomathematical norms. Whereas such studies analyze how sociomathematical norms become constituted and stabilized in the specific classroom contexts, they tend to briefly document sociomathematical norms mainly as a precursor to the detailed analysis of classroom mathematical practice. This paper reveals that the trend stems from the following two facts. First, the construct of sociomathematical norms evolved out of a classroom teaching experiment in which Cobb and his colleagues attempted to account for students' conceptual loaming as it occurred in the social context of an inquiry mathematics classroom. Second, the researchers' main role was to design instructional devices and sequences of specific mathematical content and to support the classroom teacher to foster students' mathematical learning using those sequences Given the limitations in terms of the utility of sociomathematical norms, this paper suggests the possibility of positioning the sociomathematical norms construct as more centrally reflecting the quality of students' mathematical engagement in collective classroom processes and predicting their conceptual teaming opportunities. This notion reflects the fact that the construct of sociomathematical norms is intended to capture the essence of the mathematical microculture established in a classroom community rather than its general social structure. The notion also allows us to see a teacher as promoting sociomathematical norms to the extent that she or he attends to concordance between the social processes of the classroom, and the characteristically mathematical ways of engaging. In this way, the construct of sociomathematical norms include, but in no ways needs to be limited to, teacher's mediation of mathematics discussions.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.62 no.4
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• pp.531-549
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• 2023

Despite the significance of mathematics teacher guidebooks as a support for teacher learning, there are few studies that address how elementary mathematics teacher guidebooks support teacher learning. The purpose of this study was to analyze the educative features of elementary mathematics teacher guidebooks for grades 3 and 4. For this, six units from each of ten kinds of teacher guidebooks were analyzed in terms of seven dimensions of Teacher Learning Opportunities in Korean Mathematics Curriculum Materials (TLO-KMath). The results of this study showed that mathematics content knowledge for teaching was richly provided and well organized. Teacher guidebooks provided teacher knowledge to anticipate and understand student errors and misconceptions, but were not enough. Sample dialogues between a teacher and students were offered in the teacher guidebooks, making it easier for teachers to identify the overall lesson flow and key points of classroom discourse. Formative assessment was emphasized in the teacher guidebooks, including lesson-specific student responses and their concomitant feedback examples per main activity. Supplementary activities and worksheets were provided, but it lacked rationales for differentiated instruction in mathematics. Teacher knowledge of manipulative materials and technology use in mathematics was provided only in specific units and was generally insufficient. Teacher knowledge in building a mathematical community was mainly provided in terms of mathematical competency, mathematical classroom culture, and motivation. This paper finally presented implications for improving teacher guidebooks to actively support teacher learning.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.11-35
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• 2001

Many teachers report familiarity with and adherence to reform ideas, but their actual teaching practices do not reflect a deep understanding of reform. Given the challenges in implementing reform, this study intended to explore the breakdown that may occur between teachers' adoption of reform objectives and their successful incorporation of reform ideals. To this end, this study compared and contrasted the classroom social norms and sociomathematical norms of two United States second-grade teachers who aspired to implement reform. This study is an exploratory, qualitative, comparative case study. This study uses the grounded theory methodology based on the constant comparative analysis for which the primary data sources were classroom video recordings and transcripts. The two classrooms established similar social norms including an open and permissive learning environment, stressing group cooperation, employing enjoyable activity formats for students, and orchestrating individual or small group session followed by whole group discussion. Despite these similar social participation structures, the two classes were remarkably different in terms of sociomathematical norms. In one class, the students were involved in mathematical processes by which being accurate or automatic was evaluated as a more important contribution to the classroom community than being insightful or creative. In the other class, the students were continually engaged in significant mathematical processes by which they could develop an appreciation of characteristically mathematical ways of thinking, communi-eating, arguing, proving, and valuing. It was apparent from this study that sociomathematical norms are an important construct reflecting the quality of students' mathematical engagement and anticipating their conceptual learning opportunities. A re-theorization of sociomathematical norms was offered so as to highlight the importance of this construct in the analysis of reform-oriented classrooms.

• School Mathematics
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.423-446
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• 2015

This study aims to look into the characteristics of argumentation in the task context of 'Monty Hall problem' at a high school probability class. As a result of an analysis of classroom discourses on the argumentation between teachers and second-year students in one upper level class in high school using Toulmin's argument pattern, it was found that it would be important to create a task context and a safe classroom culture in which the students could ask questions and refute them in order to make it an argument-centered discourse community. In addition, through the argumentation of solving complex problems together, the students could be further engaged in the class, and the actual empirical context enriched the understanding of concepts. However, reasoning in argumentation was mostly not a statistical one, but a mathematical one centered around probability problem-solving. Through these results of the study, it was noted that the teachers should help the students actively participate in argumentation through the task context and question, and an understanding of a statistical reasoning of interpreting the context would be necessary in order to induce their thinking and reasoning about probability and statistics.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.693-734
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• 2011

The purpose of this research is to analyze the pedagogical content knowledge on the natural number concepts of Korean Elementary School Teachers. Shulman(1986b) had developed a tool in order to understand teachers' knowledge, as he defined three types of knowledge in teaching ; Subject Matter Knowledge, Curricular Knowledge, and Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Pang(2002) defined two types of elements including in the ways of teaching ; individual element, and sociocultural element. Two research questions are addressed; (1) What is the pedagogical content knowledge of Natural number Concepts for Korean Elementary School Teachers? ; (2) What factors are included in the pedagogical content knowledge of Natural number Concepts for Korean Elementary School Teachers? Findings reveal that (1) the Korean Elementary School Teachers had three types of the pedagogical content knowledge on the natural number concepts; (2) Teacher Factors were more included than Social-Cultural Factors in the pedagogical content knowledge on the natural number concepts of the Korean Elementary School Teachers. Further suggestions were made for future researches to include (1) a comparative study on teachers between ordinary teachers and those who majored mathematics education in the graduate school. (2) an analysis on the classroom activities about the natural number concepts.