• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.181-195
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• 2009

Students' approaches to mathematical problem solving vary greatly with each other. The main objective of the current study was to compare students' performance with different thinking styles (divergent vs. convergent) and working memory capacity upon mathematical problem solving. A sample of 150 high school girls, ages 15 to 16, was studied based on Hudson's test and Digit Span Backwards test as well as a math exam. The results indicated that the effect of thinking styles and working memory on students' performance in problem solving was significant. Moreover, students with divergent thinking style and high working memory capacity showed higher performance than ones with convergent thinking style. The implications of these results on math teaching and problem solving emphasizes that cognitive predictor variable (Convergent/Divergent) and working memory, in particular could be challenging and a rather distinctive factor for students.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.109-119
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• 1992

The primary purpose of the present study is to provide the sources to improve the mathematical problem solving performance by analyzing the effects of the belief systems and the misconceptions of the middle school students in solving the problems. To attain the purpose of this study, the reserch is designed to find out the belief systems of the middle school students in solving the mathematical problems, to analyze the effects of the belief systems and the attitude on the process of the problem solving, and to identify the misconceptions which are observed in the problem solving. The sample of 295 students (boys 145, girls 150) was drawn out of 9th grade students from three middle schools selected in the Kangdong district of Seoul. Three kinds of tests were administered in the present study: the tests to investigate (1) the belief systems, (2) the mathematical problem solving performance, and (3) the attitude in solving mathematical problems. The frequencies of each of the test items on belief systems and attitude, and the scores on the problem solving performance test were collected for statistical analyses. The protocals written by all subjects on the paper sheets to investigate the misconceptions were analyzed. The statistical analysis has been tabulated on the scale of 100. On the analysis of written protocals, misconception patterns has been identified. The conclusions drawn from the results obtained in the present study are as follows; First, the belief systems in solving problems is splited almost equally, 52.95% students with the belief vs 47.05% students with lack of the belief in their efforts to tackle the problems. Almost half of them lose their belief in solving the problems as soon as they given. Therefore, it is suggested that they should be motivated with the mathematical problems derived from the daily life which drew their interests, and the individual difference should be taken into account in teaching mathematical problem solving. Second. the students who readily approach the problems are full of confidence. About 56% students of all subjects told that they enjoyed them and studied hard, while about 26% students answered that they studied bard because of the importance of the mathematics. In total, 81.5% students built their confidence by studying hard. Meanwhile, the students who are poor in mathematics are lack of belief. Among are the students accounting for 59.4% who didn't remember how to solve the problems and 21.4% lost their interest in mathematics because of lack of belief. Consequently, the internal factor accounts for 80.8%. Thus, this suggests both of the cognitive and the affective objectives should be emphasized to help them build the belief on mathematical problem solving. Third, the effects of the belief systems in problem solving ability show that the students with high belief demonstrate higher ability despite the lack of the memory of the problem solving than the students who depend upon their memory. This suggests that we develop the mathematical problems which require the diverse problem solving strategies rather than depend upon the simple memory. Fourth, the analysis of the misconceptions shows that the students tend to depend upon the formula or technical computation rather than to approach the problems with efforts to fully understand them This tendency was generally observed in the processes of the problem solving. In conclusion, the students should be taught to clearly understand the mathematical concepts and the problems requiring the diverse strategies should be developed to improve the mathematical abilities.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.407-427
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• 2019

The six core competencies included in the mathematics curriculum revised in 2015 are problem solving, reasoning, communication, attitude and practice, creativity and convergence, information processing. In particular, the problem solving is very important for students' enhancing much higher mathematical thinking. Based on this competency, this study selected the four elements of the problem solving such as problem solving process, cooperative problem solving, mathematical modeling, problem posing. And also this study selected the domain of function which is comprised of the content of the coordinate plane, the graph, proportionality in the seventh grade mathematics textbook. By the subject of the ten kinds of textbook, this study examined how the four elements of the problem solving competency were shown in each textbook.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.243-262
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• 2017

This study has its purpose on improving mathematic education by analyzing the effects of the teaching and learning process which adopted 'FOCUS Problem Solving Steps' on student's mathematical problem solving ability and their mathematical attitude. The result is as follows. First, activities through FOCUS Problem Solving Steps showed positive effect on students' problem solving ability. Second, among mathematical attitudes, mathematical curiosity, reflection and value are proved to have statistically meaningful effect and from the result that analyzed changes of subject students, we could suppose that all 6 elements of mathematical attitude had positive effect. Third, by solving questions through FOCUS steps, students felt satisfaction when they success by themselves. If projects which adopted FOCUS Problem Solving Steps take effect continuously by happiness from the process of reviewing and reflecting their own fallacy and solving that, we might expect meaningful effect on students' problem solving ability. Through this study, FOCUS Problem Solving Steps had positive effect not only on students' mathematical problem solving ability but also on formation of mathematical attitude. As a result, it implies that FOCUS Problem Solving Steps need to be applied to other grades and fields and then studied more.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.399-404
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• 2004

Mathematical creativity is a main topic which is studied within mathematics education. Also it is important in learning school mathematics. It can be important for mathematics teachers to view mathematical creativity as an disposition toward mathematical activity that can be fostered broadly in the general classroom environment. In this article, it is discussed that creativity-enriched mathematics instruction which includes creative problem-solving and problem-posing tasks and activities can be guided more creative approaches to school mathematics via routine problems.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.44 no.4 s.111
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• pp.565-586
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• 2005

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the selection difference of mathematical problem solving strategy by mathematical learning style, that is, the intellectual, emotional, and physiological factors of students, to allow teachers to instruct the mathematical problem solving strategy most pertinent to the student personality, and ultimately to contribute to enhance mathematical problem solving ability of the students. The conclusion of the study is the followings: (1) Students who studies with autonomous, steady, or understanding-centered effort was able to solve problems with more strategies respectively than the students who did not; (2) Student who studies autonomously or reconfirms one's learning was able to select more proper strategy and to explain the strategy respectively than the students who did not; and (3) The differences of the preference to the strategy are variable, and more than half of the students were likely to select frequently the strategy 'to use a formula or a principle' regardless of the learning style.

• School Mathematics
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.147-160
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• 2002

The purpose of this study is to examine the The correlation between information processing types and mathematical communication abilities / word problem solving abilities. The results obtained are as follows: 1 Simultaneous/continuous information process types showed statistically high correlation with mathematical communication abilities. However, the correlation between simultaneous information process and mathematical communication abilities is a little higher than the correlation between continuous information process and mathematical communication abilities. 2. There is a high correlation between mathematical communication abilities and word problem solving abilities. Especially, speaking ability is much more correlated with four factors of word problem solving than reading, writing and listening, Through this study, we can conclude that information process types should be consider ed in order to improve mathematical communication abilities and mathematical communication abilities is essential in word problem solving.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.277-293
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to find out how problem solving learning with open-ended mathematics problems for elementary school students affects their mathematical creativity and mathematical attitudes. To this end, 9 problem solving lessons with open-ended mathematics problems were conducted for 6th grade elementary school students in Seoul, The results were analyzed by using I-STATistics program to pre-and post- t-test. As a result of the study, problem solving learning with open-ended problems was effective in increasing mathematical creativity, especially in increasing flexibility and originality, which are sub-elements of creativity. In addition, problem solving learning with open-ended problems has helped improve mathematical attitudes and has been particularly effective in improving recognition needs and motivation among subfactors. In problem solving learning with open-ended problems, students were able to share various responses and expand their thoughts. Based on the results of the study, the researchers proposed that it is necessary to continue the development of quality materials and teacher training to utilize mathematical problem solving with open-ended problems at school sites.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.19-41
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• 2015

Previous studies indicated that students tended to hold less satisfactory beliefs about the discipline of mathematics, beliefs about themselves as learners of mathematics, and beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning. However, only a few studies had developed curricular interventions to change students' beliefs. This study aimed to examine the effect of a problem-solving curriculum (i.e., Mathematical Problem Solving for Everyone, MProSE) on Singaporean Grade 7 students' beliefs about mathematical problem solving (MPS). Four classes (n =142) were engaged in ten lessons with each comprising four stages: understand the problem, devise a plan, carry out the plan, and look back. Heuristics and metacognitive control were emphasized during students' problem solving activities. Results indicated that the MProSE curriculum enabled some students to develop more satisfactory beliefs about MPS. Further path analysis showed that students' attitudes towards the MProSE curriculum are important predictors for their beliefs.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.51-61
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• 2000

Mathematical Problem solving has been the focus of a considerable amount of research over past 30 years. But nowadays problem solving is being beginning to be of less interest to mathematics education researchers. Moreover, mathematics teachers have an urgent need to be provided with well-documented informations about "teaching of(expecially, via) problem solving" though following research issues ：ⅰ) the role of the teacher in a problem-centered classroom, ⅱ) what actually takes place in problem-centered classrooms, and iii) groups and whole classes' problem solving rather than individuals. This paper intends to give some informations about practice of teaching mathematical problem solving in elementary school.ry school.