• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.789-806
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• 2010

As calls for more attention toward social minority group increases in our society recently, in the field of mathematics education more attention toward an issue about mathematics underachievers is being amplified. Thus, the present study is to examine the effects of teaching method considering students' cognitive characteristics on mathematical underachievers' problem solving and mathematical disposition. For this study, 10 fifth graders identified as mathematical underachievers based on the results of the national level diagnosis assessment and school based assessment were voluntarily selected from an elementary school in Seoul. The results of this study found out the fact that students participating in this program improved in terms of an ability both to solve problems in various ways and to explain an process of problem solving using spoken or written language and drawings. In addition, learning environment respecting students' own mathematical ideas seems to positively influence students' attitudes toward mathematics learning and mathematical dispositions. Furthermore, this study pointed out that mathematical underachievers tend to have difficulty in expressing their own mathematical thinking by reason of linguistic limitation. Finally, the findings of this study imply that for effective teaching of mathematics underachievers, these students' own informal experience and knowledge about mathematics as well as their characteristics regarding learning difficulties should be strongly considered.

• 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.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.467-490
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• 2013

Correlation is a basic statistical concept which is necessary for understanding the relationship between two variables when they change values. In the middle school curriculum of Korea, only informal definition of correlation is taught with two-way data representations such as scatter plots and contingency tables. In this study, we investigated Korean high school students' understanding of correlation using a test consisting of 35 items about interpretation of scatter plot, contingency table, and text in realistic situation. 216 students from a high school in Seoul took the test for 20 minutes. From the results, we could observe the following: First, students did not have right criteria for determining the strength of correlation presented in scatter plots. Most of students could determine if there is correlation/no correlation and if the correlation is positive/negative by seeing the data presented in scatter plots. However, they did not judge by the closeness to the regression line but rather judged by the closeness between data points. Second, when statements about comparing the strength of correlation in the context of real life situation were given in text, the students had difficulty in understanding the distribution-related characteristic of the bi-variate data. Students had difficulty in figuring out the local distribution characteristic of data, which cannot be guessed merely based on the expression 'The correlation is strong' without statistical knowledge of correlation. Third, a large number of students could not judge the association between two variabels using conditional proportions when qualitative data are given in 2-by-2 tables. They made judgement by the absolute cell count and when the marginal sum of two categories are different for explanatory variable they thought the association could not be determined. From these results, we concluded that educational measures are required in order to remove such misconceptions and to improve understanding of correlation. Considering that the current mathematics curriculum does not cover the concept of correlation, we need to improve the curriculum as well.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.438-447
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• 2015

When communities of practice(CoP) was mostly informal, has been formulated. Because Knowledge management(KM) was emphasized in the business sector. So it increase interest in the COP. Since the early 2000s, the research interest has thus far grown. At a point in time has the subject, CoP, been researched for ten years, it is significant to review the literatures, the main topics as well as critical factors on the subject. In this study, the trends in the relevant researches and the performance factors from the previous studies are examined. The references for this study are limited to the authorized scholarly and scientific journals. The results therethrough processed show that total 37 researches were conducted between the year 2000 and 2012. These could be classified by the research methods as 16 case studies, 11 studies using CoP as the dependent variable, 4 studies using CoP as an independent variable and 3 theoretical discourses. 7 out of 16 case studies suggest the 14 success factors of CoP; the most influential performance factor is the external community support. 11 studies examined factors influencing the performance of CoP; 13 performance factors were proposed in these studies. The most significant factor influencing the performance of CoP is the team effectiveness.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.869-885
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• 2004

The aim of this study is to acquire a better understanding of how natural history(NH) and natural history museums(NHM) are perceived among students, teachers and parents by administering a questionnaire. A total of over 2500 people participated in this survey. We developed the questionnaire which was categorized by three specific areas: 1) people's overall perceptions of natural history and natural history museums; 2)the way of people's getting such perceptions and knowledge; 3) people's possessing interests in NH and NHM. The summary of survey results included; firstly people had paid attention to nature and natural environments; secondly NH and NHM were not familiar to people, but they expressed their eagerness to learn about them; thirdly the first image occurred to people was dinosaur, when they recalled NH and NHM with describing them to be mysterious and education.; on the fourth, NH and NHM were informed through TV programs; lastly, most people responded that they never learned about NH and NHM in schools but they wanted to learn them.

• Iberoamérica
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.25-57
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• 2020

Eduardo Galeano is a left-wing intellectual who led the criticism and accusations of dictatorship and social absurdity in Latin America. It digs into the truth of hidden history that has not been revealed in official history. He values the memory of history to stop repetition of the unfortunate history of the past. The main research topic of this study, 『The Book of Embraces』, is also an extension of such work. Most of the stories in this work depend on the writer's memory. There is no coherence or integration in the content of the story, and the length of the text is not constant, so it is extremely informal and fragmented. This is a strategy to formally reveal the illogical and irrational reality of Latin America. He analyzes the problems of the separation system prevalent in Latin American society from various perspectives. It separates me and the others as well as the past and the present. It makes the memory of history void and paralyzes the consciousness of history. These systems are fixed for convenient governance. In this situation, the pattern of violence becomes more explicit and broad. The anxiety and fear of the Latin American public become commonplace. It is a reality of enduring daily life without hope. Galeano finds this enduring force in historical memory. He believes that when the past and the present meet and embrace, a new history of the future can be encountered. Galeano does not just criticize reality or cynical attitude but also suggests hope for the future.