• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2012

Kant defines mathematical cognition as the cognition by reason from the construction of concepts. In this paper, I inquire the meaning and the characteristics of the construction of concepts based on Kant's theory on the sensibility and the understanding. To construct a concept is to exhibit or represent the object which corresponds to the concept in pure intuition apriori. The construction of a mathematical concept includes a dynamic synthesis of the pure imagination to produce a schema of a concept rather than its image. Kant's transcendental explanation on the sensibility and the understanding can be regarded as an epistemological theory that supports the necessity of arithmetic and geometry as common core in human education. And his views on mathematical cognition implies that we should pay more attention to how to have students get deeper understanding of a mathematical concept through the construction of it beyond mere abstraction from sensible experience and how to guide students to cultivate the habit of mind to refer to given figures or symbols as schemata of mathematical concepts rather than mere images of them.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.483-505
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• 2019

Across the world, there is a movement to incorporate computational thinking(CT) into school curricula, and math is at the heart of this movement. This paper reviewed the meanings of CT based on the point of view of Jeanette Wing, and the trend of domestic and international studies that incorporated CT into the field of mathematics education was analyzed to provide implications for mathematics education and future research. Results indicated that the meaning of CT, defined by mainly computer educators, varied in their operationalization of CT. Although CT and mathematical thinking generally have common points that are oriented toward problem solving, there were differences in the way of abstraction that is central to the two thinking processes. The experimental studies on CT in the field of mathematics education focused mainly on the development of students' cognitive capacities and affective domains through programming(coding). Furthermore, the previous studies were mainly conducted on students in school, and the studies conducted in the context of higher education, including pre-service and in-service teachers, were insufficient. Implications for mathematics teacher educators and teacher education as well as the relationship between CT and mathematical thinking are discussed.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.245-259
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• 2011

In this study, the instrument of mathematical creative problem solving ability test were considered the differences between Korean and American sixth grade students in mathematical creativity ability and mathematical thinking ability. The instrument consists of 9 items. The participants for the study were 212 Korean and 148 American students. SPSS were carried out to verify the validities and reliability. Reliabilities(Cronbach ${\alpha}$) in mathematical creativity ability is 0.9047 and in mathematical thinking ability is 0.9299 which were satisfied internal validity evaluation on the test items. Internal validity were analyzed by BIGSTEPS based on Rasch's 1-parameter item response model. The results of this study can serve as a foundation for understanding the Korean and American students differences in mathematical creativity ability and mathematical thinking ability. Especially we get the some informations on mathematical creativity ability for American's fifth grade to seventh grade students.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.225-241
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• 2010

Even though geometry is an important part basic to mathematics, studies on the program designs and teaching strategies of geometry are insufficient. The aims of this study are to propose the model of program design for autonomous learners taking their characteristics of the mathematically gifted into consideration. The core of teaching materials are analytic geometry and projective geometry. And the new teaching strategy will introduce three steps ; a draft strategies step(problem presentation, problem solving), a supportive strategies step(abstraction of a mathematical concept, mathematical induction, and extension), a transference strategies step to teaching strategy suitable for mathematically gifted. As a result, this study will suggest the effective methods of geometry teaching for the mathematically gifted.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.539-560
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate characteristics of mathematically gifted high school students' thinking in design activities using GrafEq. Eight mathematically gifted high school students, who already learned graphs of functions and inequalities necessary for design activities, were selected to work in pairs in our experiment. Results indicate that logical thinking and mathematical abstraction, intuitive and structural insights, flexible thinking, divergent thinking and originality, generalization and inductive reasoning emerged in the design activities. Nonetheless, fine-grained analysis of their mathematical activities also implies that teachers for gifted students need to emphasize both geometric and algebraic aspects of mathematical subjects, especially, algebraic expressions, and the tasks for the students are to be rich enough to provide a variety of ways to simplify the expressions.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.87-98
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• 1997

A practice is classified into the practice as a content and the practice as a method. The former means that the practical nature of mathematical knowledge itself should be a content of mathematics and the latter means that one should teach the mathematical knowledge in such a way as the practical nature is not damaged. The practical nature of mathematics means mathematician's activity as it is actually done. Activities of the mathematician are not only discovering strict proofs or building axiomatic system but informal thinking activities such as generalization, analogy, abstraction, induction etc. In this study, it is found that the most instructive ones for the future users of mathematics are such practice as content. For the practice as a method, students might learn, by becoming apprentice mathematicians, to do what master mathematicians do in their everyday practice. Classrooms are cultural milieux and microsoms of mathematical culture in which there are sets of beliefs and values that are perpetuated by the day-to-day practices and rituals of the cultures. Therefore, the students' sense of ‘what mathematics is really about’ is shaped by the culture of school mathematics. In turn, the sense of what mathematics is really all about determines how the students use the mathematics they have learned. In this sense, the practice on which classroom instruction might be modelled is that of mathematicians at work. To learn mathematics is to enter into an ongoing conversation conducted between practitioners who share common language. So students should experience mathematics in a way similar to the way mathematicians live it. It implies a view of mathematics classrooms as a places in which classroom activity is directed not simply toward the acquisition of the content of mathematics in the form of concepts and procedures but rather toward the individual and collaborative practice of mathematical thinking.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.20 no.1 s.25
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• pp.117-145
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• 2006

Mathematically gifted children have creative curiosity about novel tasks deriving from their natural mathematical talents, aptitudes, intellectual abilities and creativities. More effect in nurturing the creative thinking found in brilliant children, letting them approach problem solving in various ways and make strategic attempts is needed. Given this perspective, it is desirable to select open-ended and atypical problems as a task for educational program for gifted children. In this paper, various types of open-ended problems were framed and based on these, teaming activities were adapted into gifted children's class. Then in the problem solving process, the characteristic of bright children's mathematical thinking ability and examples of problem solving strategies were analyzed so that suggestions about classes for bright children utilizing open-ended tasks at elementary schools could be achieved. For this, an open-ended task made of 24 inquiries was structured, the teaching procedure was made of three steps properly transforming Renzulli's Enrichment Triad Model, and 24 periods of classes were progressed according to the teaching plan. One period of class for each subcategories of mathematical thinking ability; ability of intuitional insight, systematizing information, space formation/visualization, mathematical abstraction, mathematical reasoning, and reflective thinking were chosen and analyzed regarding teaching, teaming process and products. Problem solving examples that could be anticipated through teaching and teaming process and products analysis, and creative problem solving examples were suggested, and suggestions about teaching bright children using open-ended tasks were deduced based on the analysis of the characteristic of tasks, role of the teacher, impartiality and probability of approaching through reflecting the classes. Through the case study of a mathematics class for bright children making use of open-ended tasks proved to satisfy the curiosity of the students, and was proved to be effective for providing and forming a habit of various mathematical thinking experiences by establishing atypical mathematical problem solving strategies. This study is meaningful in that it provided mathematically gifted children's problem solving procedures about open-ended problems and it made an attempt at concrete and practical case study about classes fur gifted children while most of studies on education for gifted children in this country focus on the studies on basic theories or quantitative studies.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.33-50
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• 2007

Positive attitude toward mathematics is gaining bigger recognition as an important contributing factor to mathematical ability. As a strategy for strengthening affective domain and betterment of mathematics teaching and loaming, classifying students by their causes for liking or disliking mathematics can be an effective way In this study the author tried to devise methods to classify students by their types of math disliking and investigate correlations between mathematical achievements and these math-disliking types from a sample group of 8th graders. To identify the types of reasons why 8th graders dislike mathematics, a questionnaire with 30 items was made firstly. Then by applying the 'Factor analysis' of SPSS, the 30 items were divided into five partitions. Through abstraction of each partition, five math-disliking types, 'Competences', 'Basics', 'Confidences', 'Usefulness', and 'Teachers' were defined. They are expected to help teachers for describing each student's tendency of math-disliking. Further, correlation coefficients between mathematical achievements and each of the five math-disliking type were investigated against 4 groups which were made from sample group by the discrimination of gender and two levels (high and low) of mathematical achievements in cognitive area. As results, the following facts were found. (i) The trends of correlations between cognitive achievement and the five math disliking types were different across the 4 groups at statistically meaningful degrees. (ii) Most of the male students who had math-disliking types were proved to be in the low achievement level. But for the female students, only 50% of students who had math-disliking types were in the low achievement level. (iii) Compared to male students, higher portion of female students had math-disliking types despite their high achievement in cognitive area.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.199-216
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• 1998

One of the main features of the 7th revised national curriculum is the implementation of a 'Differentiated Curriculum'. Differentiated Curriculum is often interpreted as meaning the same as 'tracking' or 'ability grouping' in western countries. In the 7th revised curriculum, mathematics is organized and implemented by 'Level-Based Differentiated Curriculum'. To develop mathematics textbooks and teaching-and-learning materials for Differentiated Curriculum, the ideas of 'Enriched and Supplemental Differentiated Curriculum'need to be applied, that is, to provide advanced contents for fast learners, and plain contents for slow learners. Level Based Differentiated Curriculum could be implemented by ability grouping either between classes or within classes. According to these two exemplary models, the implementation models for supplemental course and enriched course are determined. The contents for supplemental course are comprised of minimal essential elements selected from the standard course at a decreased level of complexity and abstraction. The contents of enriched courses are focused on various applications of mathematical knowledge in the real world. Special remedy course will be offered to extremely underachieved students, The principles of developing teaching-and-learning material for special remedy course were obtained from the histo-genetic principle, progressive mathematizing principle, and constructivism.