• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.235-250
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• 2009

Researchers at Truman State University in Missouri, located in the heartland of the United States, have been using materials adapted from the English translations of the sixth national primary mathematics curriculum from Korea for professional development and assessment with groups of Missouri teachers for the purpose of enhancing teachers' understanding of the fundamentals of mathematics since 2002 [gecKo Mathematics (2008). Korean Mathematics in American Classrooms. Edited by J. Grow-Maienza. Adapted from Korean Mathematics (2001). Kirksville, MO: Truman State University. http://kmath.truman.edu/]. A professional development initiative for 50 teachers conducted in Missouri this past year is reported here. Significant gains in teacher understanding of fundamental mathematics concepts and pedagogy necessary for student achievement in primary mathematics were found as a result of the initiative.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.29-40
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• 2014

Conceptual Modeling is the process of abstracting a model from a real or proposed system. It is probably the most important aspect of a simulation study. Relate works show that the elementary developers devoted little time to understanding how the systems actually worked, namely they didn't build appropriate conceptual model. Thus, the result of simulation is inconsistent because it depends on developer's competence. Although many researchers suggested various techniques enabling developer to build conceptual model, there were several limitations. In this study, to overcome the limitations of existing techniques, we proposed COMBINE-DES (COnceptual Model BuildINg framEwork using ontology for Discrete Event Simulation). The COM-BINE-DES supports expediting the conceptual modeling with Solution ontology generated by Domain ontology and Simulation ontology. Moreover, it provides consistent simulation result regardless of repeated modeling.

• The Journal of Korean Association of Computer Education
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.79-88
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• 2006

This study investigated the effects of computer-assisted instruction adapting to the level of students' conceptual understanding upon students' conceptual understanding, retention of conceptions, learning motivation, and perception about computer-assisted instruction in concept learning. 94 seventh grade students from a coed middle school in Seoul were randomly assigned to control, CAI, adaptive CAI groups, and were taught about 'motion of molecules' for 7 class periods. Two-way ANCOVA results revealed that the scores of a conception test and a learning motivation test for the adaptive CAI group were significantly higher than those for the control group. The scores of a retention test of conceptions for the adaptive CAI group were significantly higher than those for other two groups. There were no significant interactions between the instruction and the level of previous achievement in the scores of the conception test, the learning motivation test, and the retention test of conceptions. The perception about computer-assisted instruction for the students of the adaptive CAI group were more positive than those for the students of the CAI group.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.79-87
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• 2005

We compared algorithmic problem solving and conceptual understanding of chemistry with three types (algorithmic, pictorial- and wordy-formatted conceptual) of problems. The familiarity, confidence, and preference to the three type of problems were also examined. The chemistry problem solving ability test was administered to 228 students from two top high schools in the province of Gyeonggi who were preparing the chemistry examination among the four optional subjects (biology, chemistry, earth science, physics) for enter university. After administrating the chemistry problem solving ability test, the degree of familiarity to some problems and the degree of confidence of their answers in a Likert scale were asked to the students. Besides, the students were asked to place preference to the type of problems in order. The students scored better on the algorithmic problems than on the conceptual problems (pictorial and wordy problems), and were also most familiar with the algorithmic problems. The students were more confident of their answers on both of types pictorial and algorithmic problems, and preferred pictorial problems rather than both of types algorithmic and wordy problems.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.113-129
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• 2000

The purposes of this study were to investigate children's preconception about matter, to analyze children's conceptual change. of ,matter by science learning activities, and to investigate understanding possibility about mallet The subjects of this study were the second grade students of an elementary school and science learning activities were conducted to 2 boys and 3 girls for investigating their conceptual change. Video tape recording, interview, drawing pictures and writing statements were used to collect data. The concepts in this study were properties of matter, states of matter, uses of matter and origins and changes in matter. Then, the collected data were analyzed by the way of categorization and qualitative method. The conclusions of this study are as follows: science loaming activities were effective for changing misconceptions of matter to scientific concepts. Conceptual changes of high achievers happened easier and more than of low achievers. In the ideas about matter, some children had supernatural ideas and animism, which were most second grade students' characteristics.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.55-74
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• 2014

This study examined the potential teaching strategies of prospective elementary teachers and their perceptions of the procedural/conceptual nature of examples. Fifty-four prospective teachers participated in this study, engaging in two-phase tasks. Analysis of data indicated that: (a) Overall, the participants' perceptions were geared toward putting emphasis on conceptual understanding rather than procedural understanding; but (b) Generally, procedure-oriented strategies were more frequently incorporated in participants' potential teaching plans. This implied that participants' preconceived ideas regarding math examples were not always reliable indicators of their potential teaching strategies. Implications and suggestions for mathematics teacher preparation are discussed.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.519-543
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• 2008

The study has been conducted with 29 children from 4th to 6th grades to realize how they understand addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers, and how their understanding influences solving of one-step word problems. Children's understanding of operations was categorized into "adding" and "combination" for additions, "taking away" and "comparison" for subtractions, "equal groups," "rectangular arrange," "ratio," and "Cartesian product" for multiplications, and "sharing," "measuring," "comparison," "ratio," "multiplicative inverse," and "repeated subtraction" for divisions. Overall, additions were mostly understood additions as "adding"(86.2%), subtractions as "taking away"(86.2%), multiplications as "equal groups"(100%), and divisions as "sharing"(82.8%). This result consisted with the Fischbein's intuitive models except for additions. Most children tended to solve the word problems based on their conceptual structure of the four arithmetic operations. Even though their conceptual structure of arithmetic operations helps to better solve problems, this tendency resulted in wrong solutions when problem situations were not related to their conceptual structure. Children in the same category of understanding for each operations showed some common features while solving the word problems. As children's understanding of operations significantly influences their solutions to word problems, they needs to be exposed to many different problem situations of the four arithmetic operations. Furthermore, the focus of teaching needs to be the meaning of each operations rather than computational algorithm.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.645-654
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• 2016

As the 4th industrial revolution has progressed in recent years, the importance of robot education in elementary school education is increasing. In this paper, I suggested robot education framework to consider conceptual understanding and learning activities based on the 2014, 2015 KAIE software education standard curriculum for elementary school. The framework is reconstructed the 7 stages, In order to generalize the standardized model of the software curriculum, the achievement criteria should be prepared according to the content system of the curriculum considering the conceptual understanding and learning activities proposed in this paper, and if the educational contents are developed and utilized, it is expected to contribute to the activation of robot education in addition to elementary school software education.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.3-11
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• 2012

This paper discusses the effect that classroom demonstrations have on students' conceptual understanding in concepts in introductory physics. We used the same conceptual survey to probe the students' understanding on certain concepts before and after taking the course. We introduce Hake's , which is used to evaluate the effect of various kind of teaching methods, suggested by physics education research groups, on conceptual understanding of students who took the class. The effect of physics class using demonstration turned to be better than the traditional lecture, higher for students who graduated from science schools with higher prior knowledge and demonstration experience. Authors suggest to use to probe concepts which need more attention.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.41-56
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• 2005

Assessing students' knowledge can be a challenging endeavor, as researchers attempt to capture the full complexity and potential development of children's ideas. In this study, the Dynamic Science Assessment (DSA) method (Magnusson, Templin, and Boyle, 1997) was employed to investigate 9-12 year old students' understandings of light, while engaging in multiple tasks with a flashlight with various reflectors and mirrors. The results showed that DSA was effective in providing an opportunity to establish a Zone of Proximal Development, in addition to diagnosing a student's prior understanding. Throughout the interview, a student showed a conceptual model of light as being a solid single entity whose shape can be determined by the shape of the casing of a flashlight. However, as DSA provided phenomena that could not be explained by his unitary model, the student began to re-examine his original conceptual model, and attempted to revise it. This study addressed how Dynamic Science Assessment can help us better understand, not only students' current state of understanding, but also a potential development of understanding in their ZPD. In that sense, this study argues that we should pay more attention to the instructive role of classroom assessment that can promote and support further development of students' deeper understandings.