• The Mathematical Education
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.11-18
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• 2003

One of the terms that are most often used in mathematics classrooms by either teachers or students might be about 'understanding' of mathematical concepts. Although 'understanding' in mathematics teaching and learning has been highly emphasized by many people, there is no exact and undebatable definition of 'understanding' as of yet. This paper tries to contribute to unfolding the meaning and the structure of understanding in mathematics education along with various literature and finally enhance our understanding of 'understanding' in mathematics education.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.63-78
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• 2013

Trigonometric ratios are difficult concepts to teach and learn in middle school. One of the reasons is that the mathematical terms (sine, cosine, tangent) don't convey the idea literally. This paper deals with the understanding of a concept from the learner's standpoint, and searches the orientation of teaching that make students to have full understanding of trigonometric ratios. Such full understanding contains at least five constructs as follows: skill-algorithm, property-proof, use-application, representation-metaphor, history-culture understanding [Usiskin, Z. (2012). What does it mean to understand some mathematics? In: Proceedings of ICME12, COEX, Seoul Korea; July 8-15,2012 (pp. 502-521). Seoul, Korea: ICME-12]. Despite multi-aspects of understanding, especially, the history-culture aspect is not yet a part of the mathematics class on the trigonometric ratios. In this respect this study investigated the effect of history approach on students' understanding when the history approach focused on the mathematical terms is used to teach the concept of trigonometric ratios in Grade 9 mathematics class. As results, the experimental group obtained help in more full understanding on the trigonometric ratios through such teaching than the control group. This implies that the historical derivation of mathematical terms as well as the context of mathematical concepts should be dealt in the math class for the more full understanding of some mathematical concepts.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.207-239
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• 2013

This research is a study on student's understanding fundamental concepts of mathematical curriculum, especially in geometry domain. The goal of researching is to analyze student's concepts about that domain and get the mathematical teaching methods. We developed various questions of descriptive assessment. Then we set up the term, procedure of research for the understanding student's knowledge of geometric figures. And we analyze the student's understanding extent through investigating questions of descriptive assessment. In this research, we concluded that most of students are having difficulty with defining the fundamental concepts of mathematics, especially in geometry. Almost all the students defined the fundamental conceptions of mathematics obscurely and sometimes even missed indispensable properties. And they can't distinguish between concept definition and concept image. Prior to this study, we couldn't identify this problem. Here are some suggestions. First, take time to reflect on your previous mathematics method. And then compile some well-selected questions of descriptive assessment that tell us more about student's understanding in geometric concepts.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.365-384
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• 2010

This paper is an analysis study where we surveyed how well pre-service teachers understand the mathematical concepts taught in elementary school. We analyzed the results focusing on the following: First, what are the pre-service teachers' understandings of the equal sign and variables? Secondly, how exact are their understandings of other elementary school mathematical concepts? The survey was done on the students in Teachers College of Jeju National University. We hope that the results of this study will help the improvement of mathematical education for elementary pre-service teachers.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.311-335
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• 2008

The importance of students' precise understanding of mathematical definitions, formulas, and theorems can not be underestimated. In this survey research, we attempted to evaluate students' understanding of the concepts of five topics -limit, continuity and intermediate theorem, derivative, application of derivative and integral. On the basis of the research result, this paper suggests that we need to 1) be more inventive and speculative in making test problems, 2) explain the examples and counter-examples more concretely, 3) stress and repeat the basic concepts on the stage of introducing new concepts, 4) develop more effective problems for the measure of students' understanding of mathematical concepts, 5) use developed problems in actual teaching.

• School Mathematics
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.233-248
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• 2001

In pthis aper, mathematical terms in 7th elementary mathematics curriculum(from now, in short, 7th curriculum)are reexamined critically. In 7th curriculum there are 123 terms, which seems to be selected cautiously But it is not sure. There are lots of evidences for selecting terms incautiously, Through these evidences, following conclusions are induced: (1) Terms were not selected strictly. There are many terms omitted in 7th curriculum, which are necessary for understanding mathematical concepts. (2) There were no rational principles for selecting terms in 7th curriculum. Any rational principles can not be found out among terms in 7th curriculum. (3) Mathematical terms and real life terms in 7th curriculum were not distinguished explicitly. There were some real life terms in 7th curriculum, which were significant for understanding mathematical concepts. But other real life terms which is significant also for understanding mathematical concepts were not contained in 7th curriculum.

• School Mathematics
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.547-561
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• 2010

Even though statistics is considered as one of the areas of mathematical science in the school curriculum, it has been well documented that statistics has distinct features compared to mathematics. However, there is little empirical educational research showing distinct features of statistics, especially research into the understanding of statistical concepts which are different from other areas in school mathematics. In addition, there is little discussion of a relationship between the ability of mathematical thinking and the ability of understanding statistical concepts. This study extracted some important concepts which consist of the fundamental statistical reasoning and investigated how mathematically high achieving students understood these concepts. As a result, there were both kinds of concepts that mathematically high achieving students developed well or not. There is a weak correlation between mathematical ability and the level of understanding statistical concepts.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.499-521
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• 2013

This paper analyzed the relationship between middle school students' belief about understanding with regard to mathematical concepts, procedures, and applications of the procedures. In order to gain our purpose, the academic achievement results of midterm examination of 139 middle school students and the surveys about their beliefs about understanding, mathematical concepts, and mathematical procedures were collected. And the cross analysis and the frequency analysis of SPSS were conducted. The research results showed that students' belief about understanding are irrelevant to their academic achievements. And the percentage of the students who believe that they understand was almost the same with the percentage of the students who understand the procedures. But there were differences between the percentage of the students who believe that they understand and the percentage of the students who understand the concepts. Through these, it is conformed. Students' belief about understanding does not mean they understand mathematical concepts. They just can solve mathematical problems through mechanical procedures.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.57-73
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• 2014

This study investigated the connections of mathematical thinking of students at the second, fourth, and sixth grades with regard to multiplication, fraction, and proportion, all of which have multiplicative structures. A paper-and-pencil test and subsequent interviews were conducted. The results showed that mathematical thinking including vertical thinking and relational thinking was commonly involved in multiplication, fraction, and proportion. On one hand, the insufficient understanding of preceding concepts had negative impact on learning subsequent concepts. On the other hand, learning the succeeding concepts helped students solve the problems related to the preceding concepts. By analyzing the connections between the preceding concepts and the succeeding concepts, this study provides instructional implications of teaching multiplication, fraction, and proportion.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.241-252
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• 2001

Many high school students are having difficulties for studying advanced mathematics concepts. It is more complicated than in junior high school and they are losing interest and confidence. In this paper, advanced mathematics concepts are not just basic concepts such as natural numbers, fractions or figures that can be learned through life experience but concepts that are including variables, functions, sets, tangents and limits are more abstract and formal. For the students to understand these ideas is too heavy a burden and so many of the students concentrate their efforts on just memorizing and not understanding. It is necessary to search for a meaningful method of teaching for advanced mathematics that covers deductive methods and symbols. High school teachers are always asking themselves the following question, “How do we help the students to understand the concept clearly and instruct it in a meaningful way?” As a solution we propose the followings : I. To ensure they have the right understanding of concept image involved in the concept definition. II. Put emphasis on the process of making mental representations and the role of intuition. III. To instruct students and understand them as having many chance of the instructional conversation. In conclusion, we studied the meaningful method of teaching with the theory of Ausubel related to the above proposed methods. To understand advanced mathematics concepts correctly, the mutual understanding of both teachers and students is necessary.