• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.95-120
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• 2011

Modern society is the age of the information. As new information is springing up every day and pace of change becomes faster, the importance of communication skills is growing. The recent mathematics education is recognized as not a fragmentary mathematical knowledge or results of the learning, but a procedure of mathematical thinking, and the effective expression skill of their mathematical ideas and the ability to forward it to others are regarded very serious. As the method of mathematics evaluation, mathematical essay is introduced to replace the existing multiple-choice written test. This method assess the ability which students have, that express the reorganized knowledge and information according to given situation by themselves. Ultimately, it is expected to help that students get the higher order thinking skills such as logical thinking and creativity. However, definition of elementary mathematical essay is unclear, and proper teaching methods is lacking for each stage of elementary school students. Thus, in this paper, I have defined the concept of elementary mathematical essay and made a foundation of elementary mathematical essay research, then researched about the effective utilization of elementary mathematical essay using school education. Also elementary mathematical essay teaching-learning materials is developed and applied to analyzed the students' responses. Using this program, in real elementary school education, the implications has deduced.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.149-167
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• 2009

This study was aimed to examine problem-solving ability of fifth graders on two types of mathematical essay problems, and to analyze the process of mathematical justification in solving the essay problems. For this purpose, a total of 14 mathematical essay problems were developed, in which half of the items were single tasks and the other half were data-provided tasks. Sixteen students with higher academic achievements in mathematics and the Korean language were chosen, and were given to solve the mathematical essay problems individually. They then were asked to justify their solution methods in groups of 4 and to reach a consensus through negotiation among group members. Students were good at understanding the given single tasks but they often revealed lack of logical thinking and representation. They also tended to use everyday language rather than mathematical language in explaining their solution processes. Some students experienced difficulty in understanding the meaning of data in the essay problems. With regard to mathematical justification, students employed more internal justification by experience or mathematical logic than external justification by authority. Given this, this paper includes implications for teachers on how they need to teach mathematics in order to foster students' logical thinking and communication.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.181-195
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to investigate the understanding of basic knowledge of mathematics for $6^{th}$ grade students in elementary school by an essay test and provide instructional suggestions for teachers. A total of 132 students from 6 classes in 3 elementary schools were tested and analyzed in terms of the characteristics of correct answers and types of incorrect answers. The results showed that students had poor understanding of basic conceptual concepts and principles throughout six content areas of school mathematics curriculum, despite their good performance on mathematical skills. This study included implications to teaching and learning for each of the content areas.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.131-154
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of essay writing-centered mathematics instruction on problem solving and mathematical deposition in the elementary school. For the present study, two 6th grade classes with equivalent achievement in terms of problem solving and mathematical disposition based on the pretest. A total of 15 mathematics lessons focused on writing activities were administered to the experiment group for two months, while the textbook-based traditional lessons were given to the comparison group. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted to analyze the data. The results of the present study showed that essay writing-centered mathematics teaching is statistically superior that the textbook-based mathematics teaching with respect to students' problem solving and mathematical disposition. In addition, it was evidenced that essay writing-centered mathematics instruction makes an influence on students' perceptions toward essay-based assessment in a positive way.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.103-121
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• 2010

The University of Education trains the teachers who are experts in the education and expects them to achieve the purpose of the education in the field. The goal of this study is to apprehend the characteristics of the belief and the faith of the elementary teacher and of the university student who are preliminary elementary teachers, about the mathematics and the mathematical teaching and learning and also to figure out what differences those belief and faith shows as the year goes by. In order to find the characteristics of the belief and faith, we have set up three research-problems and have found the answers of that by analyzing the replies of several multiple choice questions and essay questions we have invested for. We also have collected several information through the interviews and inspection. As a result, we have analyzed and charted the outcome of the statistical analysis of the answers about each questions and have discussed the remarkable features of those results which showed significant changes in the belief of elementary teachers about the mathematics and mathematical teaching & learning after taking the courses of "Life & Mathematics".

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.543-567
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• 2008

The current 2007 Mathematics Curriculum in Korea emphasizes mathematical problem solving, advanced mathematical thinking and effective mathematical communicating. Therefore, in order to assess and evaluate these important thinking attributes, performance evaluation using descriptive and essay type of assessments are emphasized. In this paper, analysis of the elementary mathematics curriculum is used to develop descriptive assessment problems and grading rubrics that could be used objectively and consistently by teachers of the grade 6 school mathematics. The assessment problems were developed, pilot tested, revised, implemented and analyzed in detail to understand the overall effectiveness of the descriptive evaluation method in school mathematics.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.271-293
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• 2007

Mathematics workbook is developed according to the amendment of the 7th national curriculum of mathematics. This study polled 300 national mathematics teachers in the elementary school, middle school, and high school to find out what they think in conjunction with the introduction of mathematics workbook such as needs for mathematics workbook, teachers' recognition about the system of mathematics textbook and workbook which are proper for lesson of achievement level and organization of mathematics workbook before using the mathematics workbook in school. As a results, mathematics teachers want the introduction of workbook because it helps students' self-regulated learning of mathematics and it is material very valuable for teachers to give lessons of achievement level. Also, we suggest the organization and contents of mathematics workbook on the base of our survey. Mathematics workbook has a lot of exercises assessing into the upper, intermediate, lower level in the contents, concepts of mathematics learning. It has the items developed with various problem solving methods and emphasis on performance tests, an essay-type examination and a periodical assessment. It has the problem posing items and the corner that helps students revise their mathematical errors and proposes useful, interesting mathematical activities and the commentary of a correct answer to questions at the tail of the book.