• The Mathematical Education
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• v.44 no.4 s.111
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• pp.497-508
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• 2005

The investigation of the curriculum in other countries provides meaningful implications to reflect our own curriculum. Since Korea is now under the curriculum revision, international comparative research was conducted with the curricula of Singapore and India to elicit some implications. These two countries were especially chosen because their curricula have not been actively investigated yet. Singapore mathematics curriculum starts the tracking based on students' mathematical ability from the 4th grade, and provides different curricula for the three tracks. This differentiated curriculum provides rich implications to next Korean curriculum which aims to classify the contents based on students' mathematical achievements. Indians, who have contributed significantly in the history of mathematics, have unique mathematics curriculum, remote from so called 'canonical curriculum'. After the U.S. announced the Curriculum and Evaluation Standard for School Mathematics in 1989 and the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics in 2000, many countries benchmarked these NCTM documents, and Korea was no exception. Since each country has their own school system, educational environment, and national mentality, it is not desirable to just adopt the curriculum of other countries. In this regard, Indians who have preserved their own mathematics curriculum can be a model. In sum, when we revise the curriculum, it is required to keep the balance between the open-mindedness to accept the strengths of other curricula, and the conservative attitude to preserve our own characteristics of the curriculum.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.235-255
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• 2017

This study focuses on the teaching of fraction related to curriculum, introducing time of fraction, the meaning of fractions in textbook, material of teaching of fraction concept, teaching model of introducing time of fraction concept, special cases of teaching fraction and common points of representation of fraction among Korea, New Zealand and Singapore. For this study, Korea's mathematics textbooks(3-1, 3-2, 4-1, 5-1, 6-1) and New National Curriculum Mathematics(3, 4, 5. 6. 7)of New Zealand and New Syllabus Primary Mathematics(2B, 3B, 4A, 4B, 5A, 6A)of Singapore were selected for comparison and analysis. As a results we will suggest a reference to the development of mathematical curriculum, teaching fraction and improving the quality of the textbook through a method of comparative analysis of Korea, New Zealand and Singapore.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.443-465
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• 2016

The study aims to compare our newest mathematics curriculum with Singapore's and analyse the differences of them. Because the levels of our mathematics education have been evaluated to be difficult to our students, we try to find that the evaluation is appropriate and there are other characteristics we have to notice carefully, and provide some implications for our mathematics curriculum. We mainly compared both mathematics curriculums focussed on the national documents of mathematics curriculum, and textbooks in the level of middle school. The results are following. Firstly, Singapore has three tracks based on students' abilities and there are three kinds of textbooks on the tracks. This is a different from our teaching on students level. Secondly, the introductions of our mathematics curriculum contents are not faster than Singapore's, but they have more concrete ranges of contents than us. Thirdly, the focus of Singapore's mathematics education lies on problem solving, and we can find some good examples of contents of textbook focussed on problem solving. Some mathematical concepts are introduced simply without any process of students discoveries or investigations, and the focus lies on the problem solving using the concepts. Fourthly, Singapore's mathematics textbooks are more emphasis on the internal connections than ours.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.371-402
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• 2016

The aim of this study is to compare mathematics curriculum among the United States, Singapore, England, Japan, Australia and Korea and offer suggestions to improve mathematics curriculum of Korea in the future. In order to attain these purposes, the analysis was conducted in many aspects including mathematics education system, mathematics courses, mathematics contents, assessment syllabus for university entrance examination and the construction principles of mathematics curriculum. In the light of the results of this study, our suggestions for improving mathematics curriculum of Korea are as follows: revising the contents of analysis, geometry, probability and statistics strands; organizing curriculum based on spiral construction principle; providing various opportunities to select mathematics courses according to students'career; reflecting the contents of their courses in university entrance examination.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.157-170
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• 2017

Mathematics was the main domain of PISA 2012, and both paper-based and computer-based assessment of mathematics (CBAM) were conducted. PISA 2012 was the first large-scale computer-based mathematics assessment in Korea, and it is meaningful in that it evaluated students' mathematical literacy in problem situations using dynamic geometry, graph, and spreadsheet. Although Korea ranked third in CBAM, the use of ICT in mathematics lessons appeared to be low. On the other hand, this study focused on Singapore, which ranked first in CBAM. The Singapore Ministry of Education developed online programs such as AlgeTools and AlgeDisc, and implemented the programs in classes by specifying them in mathematics curriculum and textbooks. Thus, this study investigated influential factors on computer-based assessment of mathematics by comparing the results of Korea and Singapore, and aimed to provide meaningful evidence on the direction of Korea's ICT-based mathematics education. The results showed that ICT use at home for school related tasks, attitudes towards computers as a tool for school learning, and openness and perseverance of problem solving were positively associated with computer-based mathematics performance, whereas the use of ICT in mathematics class by teacher demonstration was negatively related. Efforts are needed to improve computer use and enhance teaching techniques related to ICT use in Korean math classes. Future research is recommended to examine how effectively teachers use ICT in mathematics class in Singapore.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.159-178
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• 2015

This study discusses on aims for affective development in national curriculum of mathematics. Firstly, affective characteristics of school mathematics studied in Korea are investigated. Secondly, aims for affective development in the Korean national curriculum of mathematics from the 1st curriculum to the current one are inspected. Thirdly, aims for affective development in national curriculum of Hong Kong, Singapore and Finland are researched. From the result, suggestions on the statement about aims for affective development are proposed.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.65-81
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to investigate the international trends of how the core competencies are reflected in mathematics curriculum, and to find the implications for the revision of Korean mathematics curriculum. For this purpose, the curriculum of the 9 countries including the U.S., Canada(Ontario), England, Australia, Poland, Singapore, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong were thoroughly reviewed. It was found that a variety of core competencies were reflected in mathematics curricula in the 9 countries such as problem solving, reasoning, communication, mathematical knowledge and skills, selection and use of tools, critical thinking, connection, modelling, application of strategies, mathematical thinking, representation, creativity, utilization of information, and reflection etc. Especially the four most common core competencies (problem solving, reasoning, communication, and creativity) were further analyzed to identify their sub components. Consequently, it was recommended that new mathematics curriculum should consider reflecting various core competencies beyond problem solving, reasoning, and communication, and these core competencies are supposed to combine with mathematics contents to increase their feasibility. Finally considering the fact that software education is getting greater attention in the new curriculum, it is necessary to incorporate computational thinking into mathematics curriculum.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.109-133
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• 2012

In this research, I selected a Singapore elementary mathematics textbook which substantially reflects Singapore curriculum, and compared it with Korean one to understand how they differ in the contents system of the curriculum focused on the contents of the geometry and measurement strand, and analyzed their common points and different points intensively with textbooks for sixth-grade students. Also, I translated a chapter of the textbook, 'Mathematics in Action'. That chapter was about circumference and the area of the circle which is related to the shapes part. Then, I taught it to the experimental group to compare their achievement and the change of reaction to studying the shape-related parts with those of the control group. The results are the followings. First, when we analyze the contents of shape-related part of the textbooks for sixth-grade students of both countries, Singaporean textbook contains more contents that are introduced for the first time, which implies that it is more desirable to teach new concepts of shapes when students are in their higher grades. Second, as for the way they develop the activity of each chapter, Korean textbook sticks to a uniform way, while the Singapore textbook uses various ways for different subjects and grades. In addition, when they organize the contents of the textbook, they emphasize the importance of student's activity and lead students with various methods by suggesting several questions and situations.

• School Mathematics
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.473-491
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• 2010

In the TIMSS assessment goal and open TIMSS 2007, Singapore recorded a lower overall achievement level compared with Korea; however, the excellent results shown by Singapore furnished an opportunity for various countries to research into the education in Singapore. This paper conducted a comparative analysis of the "Proportion, Proportional Expression, and Percentile" area out of the three topics involving "Fractions and Decimals", "Proportion, Proportional expression, and Percentile", and "Measurement", in all of which Singapore exhibited a higher percentage of correct answers than Korea. The paper was able to discover the following differences through a comparative analysis of how Korean and Singaporean textbooks deal with the open questions of TIMSS 2007 after looking into them according to four assessment goals. First, the Singaporean textbook introduced the concept of proportion one year ahead of the Korean textbook. Second, the Singaporean textbook repeatedly coped with the topic of "Proportion, Proportional Expression, and Percentile" in depth and by academic year, and its volume was larger than that of the Korean textbook. Third, there was a difference in the introduction and definition of the concept of proportion. Fourth, the way of introducing a proportional expression was also different, and the Singaporean textbook proposed many more questions that utilize this expression in ordinary life. Based on these differences, the paper suggested implications that could be applied to the Korean curriculum and textbook.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.441-457
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to analyze Korean students' mathematics achievement characteristics and draw implications for better math education in schools through comparing the results of three east Asian top level countries, Korea, Singapore, and Japan in PISA 2012 results. As a results, the rate of correct answers of Korea students was relatively low compared with those of Singapore, but relatively higher than Japan. From the results of effect size, similar results from t-test was discovered. As shown in analysis according to sub-elements in math assessment framework, the Korean students had low effect size in every sub-elements than Singapore. and they had high effect size at most of sub-elements than Japan, except "personal" context. In top performing level(above level 5), the Korean students had high effect size at "quantities" in mathematical contents, and "employ" in mathematical processes compared with Singapore. And they had row effect size at 6 sub-elements compared with Japan.