• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.381-403
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• 1998

As a researcher engaged in the mathematical education, mathematics teachers are interested in instructional methods. While it is unlikely that the viewpoints of individual mathematics teachers are reflected in making decisions on instructional purposes and instructional contents, a good many parts of instructional methods on mathematical facts are decided by individual teachers. This means that the role of mathematics teachers is given much weight in the mathematical education. Therefore, the mathematics teachers must not be excluded in all parts of the study of mathematical education. We studied the instructional methods of function concept, a central topic in school mathematics from the following perspectives. First, we examined the characteristics of the three(correspondence-centered, middle, dependence centered) viewpoints about the essence of function concept. And we should that which of them should be the viewpoint of instruction of function concept in school mathematics. Second, we investigated the questions regarding the process of function instruction in school mathematics and presented alternative instruction methods of function concept to solve the questions. Third, we postulated the importance of polynomial function, relating college mathematics in order to present the reason why the polynomial function is importantly treated in functional instruction of school mathematics.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.1-28
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• 2002

This study explored teachers (n = 219) from northern, central, southern and eastern Taiwan concerning their views about children's learning difficulties, mathematical instruction and school mathematics curricular. Results showed that teachers' mathematics knowledge or their instruction methods had no significant influence on their views of children's learning difficulties. Even though teachers indicated that understanding of abstract mathematical concepts was the most prominent difficulty for children, they tended to employ direct instruction rather than constructive and cooperative problem solving in their teaching. However, teachers' views of children's learning difficulties did influence their instructional practice. Results from in-dept interviews revealed that there were some obstacles that prevented teachers from putting constructiveism perspectives of instruction into teaching practice. Further investigation is needed to develop a better understanding of epistemology and teaming psychology as well as to help teachers create constructive learning situations.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.475-492
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• 2020

This study is to establish the items on class critiques based on the mathematical competencies according to the mathematics curriculum revised in 2015. Namely, this study deals with the items on how pre-service or in-service teachers understand and comment on mathematics instruction on their own instruction or peers' instruction. To accomplish this, first of all the draft items on instructional reviews was developed by researchers of this study on the basis of the previous study(Hwang, 2018). In order to revise and develop the draft items, the experimental study was executed. The experimental study was done by the subject of 11 groups who are undergraduate students in the educational college of C University. The subject was supposed to watch an in-service middle school mathematics teacher's excellent instruction(study) video and to comment the instruction video on the draft items on class critiques. While analyzing the comments of the subject, the revised items on the class critiques were to be develop. Based on this study, from now on, the final and ideal items on the class critiques would be establish to reflect and comment teachers' instruction.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.455-478
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• 2023

Expectations and interests in blended learning are increasing as universities respond to the educational flow of transition to e-lernring. This study tried to explore and understand the meaning of and the properties of blended instruction. In addition, through the literature review, this study was to find out how bleanded learning affected in teaching and learning situation. Particularly, it was to find out students' preference to the type of blended instruction. Those types are the mixed of or the unique of class instruction(off line), on line, and recorded instruction. To investigate learners' preference to the type of the instruction and also the reason of the preference, in this study, the 27 undergraduate students of the fourth grade in the major of mathematics education in the C university located in G area. By the result, most students preferred the mixed type of instruction involving off line and recorded instruction. The reason is that they could attend to the class while participating in the group activity positively and understand the content through the communication in depth and the instructor's feedback. Because of this reason, they did not prefer to the only one type insturction such as the recorded type.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.361-380
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• 2010

Some 400 Secondary One (i.e. seventh-grade) students from 10 schools were provided with non-routine mathematical problems in their normal mathematics classes as exercises for one academic year. Their attitudes toward mathematics, their conceptions of mathematics and their problem-solving performance were measured both in the beginning and at the end of the year. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the introduction of an appropriate dose of non-routine problems would generate some effects on the students' conceptions of mathematics. A medium dose of non-routine problems (as reported by the teachers) would result in a change of the students' conception of mathematics to perceiving mathematics as less of "a subject of calculables." On the other hand, a high dose would lead students to perceive mathematics as more useful and more as a discipline involving thinking. However, with a low dose of non-routine problems, students found mathematics more "friendly" (free from fear). It is therefore proposed that the use of non-routine mathematical problems to an appropriate extent can induce changes in students' "lived space" of mathematics learning and broaden their conceptions of mathematics and mathematics learning.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.483-506
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• 2009

In this study, as a way to develop students' latent ability of mathematics, we asked the students to write on the ways to develop their potential in mathematics. Each student chose his own topic relating to the development of potential in mathematics. In addition, we distributed questionnaires on the same topic to the students. The contents of questionnaires and the summaries of students' writings are given in appendix 1 and 2. Among the submitted writings, good writings and the suggested ideas in them are introduced for more effective instruction of mathematics in college. During the course of conducting this study, we had a good experience of seeking and finding the ways to develop students' potential in mathematics. Finally, for more rigorous study on this topic, we felt a need for conducting cooperative research with the colleagues.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.13-22
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• 2020

The effectiveness of mathematics classroom teaching is directly affected by the teaching language. Comparing the teaching language of a novice teacher in algebra instruction with an expert teacher from the perspective of pragmatics, it comes to a conclusion that: both teachers attach great importance to the use of the teaching language, with the proportion of the teaching language time more than 50%; the novice teacher uses the affirmative language frequently, twice as often as the expert teacher; the declarative language the novice teacher uses in the exploration is mostly to repeat students' answer, which takes up a short time; the novice teacher uses the teaching language too much in the consolidation, which causes fewer opportunities for students to think. Then we get the following revelations: streamline the teaching language and control the time of the teaching language reasonably; make good use of the affirmative language to provide students hints and necessary time for thinking; avoid simple restatement of the student's answer and use the declarative language ingeniously to improve the feedback quality; use the teaching language appropriately to help students accumulate basic experience in mathematics activities.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.67-83
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• 2008

Promoting students' mathematics understanding is an important research theme in mathematics education. According to general theories of learning, mathematics understanding is close to active learning or significant learning. Thus, if a teacher wants to promote his/her students' mathematics understanding, he/she should pay attention to the students so that the students' thinking is in active situation. In the first part of this paper, some mathematics teachers' ideas about paying attention to their students in Chinese high school are given by questionnaire and interview. In the second part of this paper, we give some teaching episodes about how experienced mathematics teachers promote their students' mathematics understanding based on paying attention on them.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.285-309
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• 2022

A large body of previous studies investigated mathematical tasks by analyzing the design process prior to lessons or textbooks. While researchers have revealed the significant roles of mathematical tasks within written curricular, there has been a call for studies about how mathematical tasks are implemented or what is experienced and learned by students as enacted curriculum. This article proposes a mathematical task analytic framework based on a holistic definition of tasks encompassing both written tasks and the process of task enactment. We synthesized the features of the mathematical tasks and developed a task analytic framework with multiple dimensions: breadth, depth, bridging, openness, and interaction. We also applied the scoring rubric to analyze three multiplication tasks to illustrate the framework by its five dimensions. We illustrate how a series of tasks are analyzed through the framework when students are engaged in multiplicative thinking. The framework can provide important information about the qualities of planned tasks for mathematics instruction (proactive) and the qualities of implemented tasks during instruction (reactive). This framework will be beneficial for curriculum designers to design rich tasks with more careful consideration of how each feature of the tasks would be attained and for teachers to transform mathematical tasks with the provision of meaningful learning activities into implementation.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.423-436
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• 2010

In this paper we discuss the Socratic method from the aspects of subject education and examine the meaning of the method in mathematics education that is the most suitable subject for the realization of the Socratic method. In addition, as a realization of the Socratic method, we conducted a teaching-learning experiment of complex natural exponential function with a 2nd year college student. The results of the experiment are analyzed with the intention of improving instruction of the complex analysis that is one of the college mathematics courses.