• School Mathematics
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.259-273
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• 2003

A fraction is one of the most important concepts that students have to learn in elementary school. But it is a challenge for students to understand fraction concept because of its conceptual complexity. The focus of fraction learning is understanding the concept. Then the problem is how we can facilitate the conceptual understanding and estimate it. In this study, Moore's concept understanding scheme(concept definition, concept image, concept usage) was adopted as an theoretical framework to investigate students' fraction understanding. The questions of this study were a) what concept image do students have\ulcorner b) How well do students solve fraction problems\ulcorner c) How do students use fraction concept to generate fraction word problem\ulcorner By analyzing the data gathered from three elementary school, several conclusion was drawn. 1) The students' concept image of fraction is restricted to part-whole sub-construct. So is students' fraction understanding. 2) Students can solve part-whole fraction problems well but others less. This also imply that students' fraction understanding is partial. 3) Half of the subject(N=98) cannot pose problems that involve fraction and fraction operation. And some succeeded applied the concept mistakenly. To understand fraction, various fraction subconstructs have to be integrated as whole one. To facilitate this integration, fraction program should focus on unit, partitioning and quantity. This may be achieved by following activities: * Building on informal knowledge of fraction * Focusing on meaning other than symbol * Various partitioning activities * Facing various representation * Emphasizing quantitative aspects of fraction * Understanding the meanings of fraction operation Through these activities, teacher must help students construct various faction concept image and apply it to meaningful situation. Especially, to help students to construct various concept image and to use fraction meaningfully to pose problems, much time should be spent to problem posing using fraction.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.235-263
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• 2009

The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of children's understanding of fractions in mathematics problem solving. Kieren has claimed that the concept of fractions is not a single construct, but consists of several interrelated subconstructs(i.e., part-whole, ratio, operator, quotient and measure). Later on, in the early 1980s, Behr et al. built on Kieren's conceptualization and suggested a theoretical model linking the five subconstructs of fractions to the operations of fractions, fraction equivalence and problem solving. In the present study we utilized this theoretical model as a reference to investigate children's understanding of fractions. The case study has been conducted with 6 children consisted of 4th to 5th graders to detect how they understand factions, and how their understanding influence problem solving of subconstructs, operations of fractions and equivalence. Children's understanding of fractions was categorized into "part-whole", "ratio", "operator", "quotient", "measure" and "result of operations". Most children solved the problems based on their conceptual structure of fractions. However, we could not find the particular relationships between children's understanding of fractions and fraction operations or fraction equivalence, while children's understanding of fractions significantly influences their solutions to the problems of five subconstructs of fractions. We suggested that the focus of teaching should be on the concept of fractions and the meaning of each operations of fractions rather than computational algorithm of fractions.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.111-130
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• 2018

In this study, I compared and analyzed the contents of Korean, Japanese, Singapore, American, and Finnish textbooks about fraction which is one of the important and difficult concepts in elementary school mathematics. This is aimed to get the implications for meaningful fractional teaching and learning by analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the methods and time of introducing the concept because fraction has the diversity of the sub-concepts and the introducing methods or process. As a result of the analysis, the fraction was introduced as part-whole(area) in all five countries' textbooks, but the use of number line, conversion between improper fraction and mixed number, whether to deal with part-whole(set) model. Furthermore, there are differences in the methods in obtaining of the equivalent fraction and the order of arrangement in comparison of fraction. Through this analysis, we discussed the reconsideration of the introducing contexts of fractions, the use of number line when introducing fractions, and the problem of segmentation and classification of contents.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.53-68
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• 2012

This paper investigated the conceptual schemes four children constructed as they related division number sentences to various types of fraction: Proper fractions, improper fractions, and mixed numbers in both contextual and abstract symbolic forms. Methods followed those of the constructivist teaching experiment. Four fifth-grade students from an inner city school in the southwest United States were interviewed eight times: Pre-test clinical interview, six teaching / semi-structured interviews, and a final post-test clinical interview. Results showed that for equal sharing situations, children conceptualized division in two ways: For mixed numbers, division generated a whole number portion of quotient and a fractional portion of quotient. This provided the conceptual basis to see improper fractions as quotients. For proper fractions, they tended to see the quotient as an instance of the multiplicative structure: $a{\times}b=c$ ; $a{\div}c=\frac{1}{b}$ ; $b{\div}c=\frac{1}{a}$. Results suggest that first, facility in recall of multiplication and division fact families and understanding the multiplicative structure must be emphasized before learning fraction division. Second, to facilitate understanding of the multiplicative structure children must be fluent in representing division in the form of number sentences for equal sharing word problems. If not, their reliance on long division hampers their use of syntax and their understanding of divisor and dividend and their relation to the concepts of numerator and denominator.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.151-170
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• 2009

The purpose of the study is to analyze the sixth graders' understanding of concepts and operation about fraction. The test was administered and analyzed to 707 sixth graders' performance on fractions after the fraction instructions in elementary schools in Seoul, Korea. The participants are asked to answer two sets of questions for 40 minutes. First, they are asked to answer to 16 problems about the concepts of fraction with respect to part-whole, ratio, operator, measure, quotient, equivalent, and operations. Second, specially, to investigate sixth graders' ability of drawing and describing the situation of division including fraction, the descriptive problem asked students (1) to describe $3\;{\div}\;\frac{1}{2}$ into pictorial representation and (2) to write the solving process. The participants of this study didn't show deep understandings about the concepts and operation of fraction. The degree of understanding of subconstructs of fraction shows that their knowledge of ratio concept with respect to fraction was highest while their understanding of measure with respect to fraction was lowest. Considering their wrong answers, about 59% of participants showed misconception to the question of naming one fraction that appears between $\frac{1}{5}$ and $\frac{1}{6}$. Further, they didn't explain their understanding with drawing about the division of fraction ($3\;{\div}\;\frac{1}{2}$).

• School Mathematics
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.385-399
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• 2003

In our present elementary mathematics curriculum, natural numbers are taught by using the a method of one-to-one correspondence or counting operation which are not related to measurement, and fractional numbers are taught by using a method which is partially related to measurement. The most serious limitation of these teaching methods is that natural numbers and fractional numbers are separated. To overcome this limitation, Dewey and Davydov insisted that the natural number and the fractional number should be taught by measurement of quantity. In this article, we suggested a method of teaching the natural number and the fractional number by measurement of quantity based on the claims of Dewey and Davydov, and compare it with our current method. In conclusion, we drew some educational implications of teaching the natural number and the fractional number by measurement of quantity as follows. First, the concepts of the natural number and the fractional number evolve from measurement of quantity. Second, the process of transition from the natural number to the fractional number became to continuous. Third, the natural number, the fractional number, and their lower categories are closely related.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.199-219
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• 2011

In this thesis, we designed a experimental learning-teaching plan of 'decimal fraction concept' at the 4-th grade level. We rest our plan on two basic premises. One is the fact that a essential concept of decimal fraction is 'polynomial of which indeterminate is 10', and another is the fact that the origin of decimal fraction is successive measurement activities which improving accuracy through decimal partition of measuring unit. The main features of our experimental learning-teaching plan is as follows. Firstly, students can experience a operation which generate decimal unit system through decimal partitioning of measuring unit. Secondly, the decimal fraction expansion will be initially introduced and the complete representation of decimal fraction according to positional notation will follow. Thirdly, such various interpretations of decimal fraction as 3.751m, 3m+7dm+5cm+1mm, $(3+\frac{7}{10}+\frac{5}{100}+\frac{1}{1000})m$ and $\frac{3751}{1000}m$ will be handled. Fourthly, decimal fraction will not be introduced with 'unit decimal fraction' such as 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, ${\cdots}$ but with 'natural number+decimal fraction' such as 2.345. Fifthly, we arranged a numeration activity ruled by random unit system previous to formal representation ruled by decimal positional notation. A experimental learning-teaching plan which presented in this thesis must be examined through teaching experiment. It is necessary to successive research for this task.