• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.119-139
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• 2017

The construction in the ancient Greek era had more meanings than a construction in the present education. Based on this fact, this study examines the meaning of the current textbook. In contrast, we have extracted the meaning of the constructions in Euclid Elements. In addition, we have been thinking about what benefits can come up if the meaning of the construction in Euclid Elements was reflected in current education, and suggested a way to exploit that advantage. As results, it was confirmed that the construction in the current textbook was merely a means for introducing and understanding the congruent conditions of the triangle. On the other hand, the construction had four meanings in Euclid Elements; Abstract activities that have been validated by the postulates, a mean of demonstrating the existence of figures and obtaining validity for the introduction of auxiliary lines, refraining from intervening in the argument except for the introduction of auxiliary lines, a mean of dealing with numbers and algebra. Finally we discussed the advantages of using the constructions as a means of ensuring the validity of the introduction of the auxiliary line to the argument. And we proposed a viewpoint of construction by intervention of virtual tools for auxiliary lines which can not be constructed with Euclid tool.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.309-331
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• 2007

Mathematics education starts from learning the concept of number. How the children at the beginning of school age learn the concept of natural number is therefore important for their future mathematics education. Since ancient Greek period, the concept of natural number has reflected various mathematical-philosophical points of view at each period and has been discussed ceaselessly. The concept of natural number is hard to define. Since 19th century, it has also been widely discussed in psychology and education on how to teach the concept of natural number to the children at the beginning of school age. Most of the works, however, were focused on limited aspects of natural number concept. This study aims to show the best way to teach the children at the beginning of school age the various aspects of natural number concept based on activistic perspective, which played a crucial role in modern mathematics education. With this purpose, I investigated the theory of the activistic construction of knowledge and the construction of natural number concept through activity, and activistic approaches about instruction in natural number concept made by Kant, Dewey, Piaget, Davydov and Freudenthal. In addition, I also discussed various aspects of natural number concept in historical and mathematical-philosophical points of view. Based on this investigation, I tried to find out existing problems in instructing natural number to primary school children in the 7th National Curriculum and aimed to provide a new solution to improve present problems based on activistic approaches. And based on activistic perspective, I conducted an experiment using Cuisenaire colour rods and showed that even the children at the beginning of school age can acquire the various aspects of natural number concept efficiently. To sum up, in this thesis, I analyzed epistemological background on activistic construction of natural number concept and presented activistic approach method to teach various aspects of natural number concept to the children at the beginning of school age based on activism.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.518-537
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• 2019

This study examined the implications of a place-based earth science program integrated with Mathematics. 11 pre-service earth science teachers and 22 middle school students participated in the service education activities of earth science for 30 hours focusing on the measurement of the earth's size through earth science experiments as part of the middle school curriculum. In order to minimize errors that may occur during the earth's size measurement experiments using Eratosthenes's shadows length method of the ancient Greek era, the actual data were collected after triangulation ratios were conducted in the locations of two middle schools: one in remote metropolitan and the other in rural area. The two schools' students shared the final estimate result. Through this process, they learned the mathematical method to express the actual data effectively. Participants, experienced the importance and difficulty of the repetitive and accurate data acquisition process, and also discussed the causes of errors included in the final results. It implies that a Place-Based Earth Science Program activity can contribute to students' increased-understanding of the characteristics of earth science inquiry and to developing their problem solving skills, thinking ability, and communication skills as well, which are commonly emphasized in science and mathematics in the 2015 reunion curriculum. It is expected that a place-based science program can provide a foundation for developing an integrated curriculum of mathematics and science.

• School Mathematics
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.391-402
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to resolve misunderstanding for centroid of a triangle and to clarify several logical problems in finding the centroid of a Polygon. The conclusions are the followings. For a triangle, the misunderstanding that the centroid of a figure is the intersection of two lines that divide the area of the figure into two equal part is more easily accepted caused by the misinterpretation of a median. Concerning the equilibrium of a triangle, the median of it has the meaning that it makes the torques of both regions it divides to be equal, not the areas. The errors in students' strategies aiming for finding the centroid of a polygon fundamentally lie in the lack of their understanding of the mathematical investigation of physical phenomena. To investigate physical phenomena mathematically, we should abstract some mathematical principals from the phenomena which can provide the appropriate explanations for then. This abstraction is crucial because the development of mathematical theories for physical phenomena begins with those principals. However, the students weren't conscious of this process. Generally, we use the law of lever, the reciprocal proportionality of mass and distance, to explain the equilibrium of an object. But some self-evident principles in symmetry may also be logically sufficient to fix the centroid of a polygon. One of the studies by Archimedes, the famous ancient Greek mathematician, gives a solution to this rather awkward situation. He had developed the general theory of a centroid from a few axioms which concerns symmetry. But it should be noticed that these axioms are achieved from the abstraction of physical phenomena as well.