• The Mathematical Education
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.199-210
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• 2004

This study investigates 55 preservice secondary mathematics teachers' situational understanding of functional relationship. Functional thinking is fundamental and useful because it develops students' quantitative thinking about the world and analytical thinking about complex situations through examination of the relations between interdependent factors. Functional thinking is indispensable for understanding natural phenomena, for investigation by science, and for the technological inventions in engineering and navigation. Therefore, it goes without saying that teachers should be able to represent and communicate about various functional situations in the course of teaching and learning functional relationships to develop students' functional thinking. The result of this study illustrates that many preservice teachers were not able to appropriately represent and communicate about various functional situations. Additionally, it shows that most preservice teachers have limited understanding of the value of teaching function.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.421-444
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• 2015

The study conducted a survey on mathematics teachers' perception about the mathematics curriculum and carried out a field survey of schools' compliance of the 2009 revised mathematics curriculum. The questionnaires were distributed to and collected from 36 mathematics teachers in 22 middle and high schools. According to the results of the study, it was found that most mathematics teachers had low interest in and did not feel the necessity and importance of revising the mathematic curriculum. This was because that the necessity and direction of the curriculum revision was not well understood by secondary school teachers, thanks to a hasty revamping. In addition, schools are organizing and operating their own educational programs with the focus on the college entrance exams, regardless of the guidelines of the current revised curriculum.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.15-35
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• 1999

The purpose of the study was to suggest a few fundamental ideas to secondary mathematics teachers regarding using LOGO in their classrooms. Even though this software is "classic" in mathematics lessons in the States and western countries, Korean secondary mathematics teachers did not have much opportunities to become familiar with this software and its applications in their classrooms. This article offered a few suggestions with the specific guidelines. Basic commands were also listed for those who are not familiar with this software. Since the current Korean educational curriculum do not allow to use LOGO in regular classrooms as substitute lessons, it is recommended to implement these ideas in extra curriculum lessons or "Math Club" as trial basis.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.485-501
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• 2016

This study was to explore the factors that mathematics teachers actually need to improve their students' creativity and character to pursue education in the direction of the revised curriculum. We first temporarily extracted the elements to reinforce mathematics teachers' professionalism for creativity and character education through literature review, and then conducted the modified delphi technique and interview by targeting secondary school mathematics teachers. Based on the discussion of previous studies, we divided into five areas for mathematics teachers' professional development of creativity and character education: 1. understanding of creativity and character education, 2. creating an environment, 3. understanding curriculum for creativity and character education, 4. instructional design and apply for creativity and character education, 5. evaluating for creativity and character education. Actually content elements highly required by mathematics teachers were reset 17 items. The results of this study are expected to be used as the basis for teachers' professional development of creativity and character education in mathematics education.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.217-239
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• 2001

To lessen the ratio of under achievers is one of the most urgent task which recent school mathematics education is confronted with. To cope with this problem efficiently, math. teachers should know more specifically and concretely the causes that make the students dislike mathematics. But actually, there are too many reasons for these situations. So, in this paper, we tried to devise a tool to analyze and measure each student's math. disliking status. We proceeded this research via the following procedures. 1. Grasping the causes which make the students dislike mathematics as specifically as possible. To obtain this, we asked more than 300 of secondary school students to write down their thoughts about school mathematics. 2. Analyzing the responses, we abstracted 74 numbers of items which were supposed to be the causes for secondary school students'mathematics disliking. 3. With these items we made a test to measure students'aptitude for each item. 4. With this test paper, we tested over 800 of secondary school students. Through factor analysis and theoretical argument, we categorized the 74 items into 11 groups whose names were defined as factors of mathematics disliking. 5. For each of these 11 factors, we developed a norm which could serve as standard of comparison in measuring each student's mathematics disliking status. Using this tool teachers were able to describe each student's traits of mathematics disliking more specifically.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.45-58
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• 2001

This study sheds light on the importance of developing creativity in mathematics class by examining the theoretical base of creativity and its relationship to mathematics. The study also reviewed the realities of developing creativity in mathematics courses, and it observed and analyzed the processes in which students and teachers solve the mathematics problems. By doing so, the study examined creative abilities of both students and teachers and suggests what teachers can do to tap the potential of the student. The subjects of the study are two groups of students and one group of mathematics teachers. These groups were required to solve a particular problems. The grading was made based on the mathematical creativity factors. There were marked differences in the ways of the solutions between of the student groups and the teacher group. It was clear that the teachers\\` thinking was limited to routine approaches in solving the given problems. In particular, there was a serious gap in the area of originality. As can be seen from the problem analysis by groups, there was a meaningful difference between the creativity factors of students and those of teachers. This study presented research findings obtained from students who were guided to freely express their creativity under encouragement and concern of their teachers. Thus, teachers should make an effort to break from their routine thinking processes and fixed ideas. In addition, teaching methods and contents should emphasize on development of creativity. Such efforts will surely lead to an outcome that is beneficial to students.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.387-407
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• 2014

This study investigeted secondary math teachers' difficulties of technology in geometry class with grounded theory by Strauss and Corbin. 178 secondary math teachers attending the professional development program on technology-based geometry teaching at eight locations in January 2014, participated in this study with informed consents. Data was collected with an open-ended questionnaire survey. In line with grounded theory, open, axial and selective coding were applied to data analysis. According to the results of this study, teachers were found to experience resistance in using technology due to new learning and changes, with knowledge and awareness of technology effectively interacting to lessen such resistance. In using technology, teachers were found to go through the 'access-resistance-unaccepted use-acceptance' stages. Teachers having difficulties in using technology included the following four types: 'inaccessible, denial of acceptance, discontinuation of use, and acceptance 'These findings suggest novel perspectives towards teachers having difficulties in using technology, providing implications for teachers' professional development.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.21-29
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• 2016

Metacognition means "thinking about one's own thinking". There are generally two aspects of metacognition: i) Reflection - thinking about what we know; and ii) Self-regulation - managing how we go about learning. Developing metacognitive abilities is not simply about becoming reflective learners, but about acquiring specific learning strategies as well. There are several strategies that may be used by teachers to develop metacognitive skills amongst learners. As part of a Professional Development project secondary school mathematics teachers have been developing their knowledge and skills to teach for metacognition. In this paper we analyze two lessons presented by groups of teachers in the project and tease out similarities and differences between the lessons that afford or hinder the development of metacognitive skills of learners.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.109-135
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• 2013

The purpose of the study was to investigate the reality of middle school mathematics teachers' subject matter knowledge for teaching mathematical conjecture and justification. Data in the study were collected through interviewing nine Chinese and ten Korean middle school mathematics teachers. The teachers responded to the question that was designed in the form of a scenario that presents a teaching task related to a geometrical topic. The teachers' oral responses were audiotaped and transcribed, and their written notes were collected. The results of the study were compared to the analysis of American and Chinese elementary and secondary teachers' responses to the same task in Ball (1988) and Ma (1999). The findings of the study suggested that teachers' approaches to explaining and demonstrating a mathematical topic were significantly influenced by their knowledge of learners and knowledge of the curriculum they teach. One of the practical implications of the study is that teachers should recognize the advantages of learning the conceptual structure of a mathematical topic. It allows the teachers to have the flexibility to come up with meaningful mathematical approaches to teaching the topic, which are comprehensible to the learners whatever the grade levels they teach, rather than rule-based algorithms.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.351-363
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• 2015

In this study, 45 pre-service mathematics teachers were surveyed about how the perception of knowledge through teaching practicum have changed and how the knowledge learned in college and teaching practicum helped to format teachers' knowledge and analyzed survey's result. Pre-service mathematics teachers felt the knowledge for understanding students were needed the most and considered the experiences from teaching practicum were more useful than the knowledge learned from college classes. However, they had low appreciations on connecting knowledge on learned contents with real-life or other subjects and on necessity of knowledge of using various learning tools or mathematical materials in class. Also, they have answered the knowledges from college classes and teaching practicum were useless in those areas. Especially, they pointed out that guidance teachers during teaching practicum were insufficient in instructing. Therefore, we suggest the following two to improve the teaching ability of pre-service mathematics teachers through teaching practicum. First, college and secondary school cooperating programs such as class-observation and student-mentor system connected with local society should be developed. Second, the special re-training program for guidance teachers of teaching practicum is needed.