• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.537-556
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• 2011

This paper focuses on proportional reasoning being emphasized in today's elementary math, and analyzes the way students use their proportional reasoning abilities and strategies according to their academic achievement levels in solving proportional problems. For this purpose, various types of proportional problems were presented to 173 sixth-grade elementary school students and they were asked to use a maximum of three types of proportional reasoning strategies to solve those problems. The experiment results showed that upper-ranking students had better ability to use, express and perceive more types of proportional reasoning than their lower-ranking counterparts. In addition, the proportional reasoning strategies preferred by students were shown to be independent of academic achievement. But there was a difference in the proportional reasoning strategy according to the types of the problems and the ratio of the numbers given in the problem. As a result of this study, we emphasize that there is necessity of the suitable proportional reasoning instruction which reflected on the difference of ability according to student's academic achievement.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.23-31
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• 1998

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the development of elementary school student's reasoning strategies used in proportional tasks. Three hundred and ninety elementary students were sampled to investigate their reasoning strategies used in Pouring Water Tasks. Results showed that 4 percentage of students used proportional reasoning strategy. By the way, about 80 % of students used qualitative guess or additive strategies to solve proportion tasks. Further, about fifth-grade or 11-year-old students began to use proportional reasoning strategy. Also, female and malt students' development of reasoning strategies improved from 1st grade across 5th grade and from 6-year-old across 11-year-old. However, female did not show the improvement of strategy development after 5th-grade or 11-year-old. However, male students showed a continuous improvement after the grade or age. In addition, students showed developmental patterns of spurts and plateau, ra thor than a linear developmental pattern. The present study also discussed educational implications of this findings in school curriculum.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.601-625
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• 2016

In this study, I hoped to reveal the understanding of pre-service elementary teachers about proportional reasoning and the traits of proportional reasoning strategy used by pre-service elementary teachers. The results of this study are as follows. Pre-service elementary teachers should deal with various proportional reasoning tasks and make a conscious effort to analyze proportional reasoning task and investigate various proportional reasoning strategies through teacher education program. It is necessary that pre-service elementary teachers supplement the lacking tasks such as qualitative reasoning and distinction between proportional situation and non-proportional situation. Finally, It is suggested to preform the future research on teachers' errors and mis-conceptions of proportional reasoning.

• School Mathematics
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.819-838
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• 2016

This research analyzed proportional reasoning abilities of the 5th grade students who learned only the basis of ratio and rate and 6th grade students who also learned proportion and cross product strategy. Data were collected through the proportional reasoning tests and the interviews, and then the achievement of the students and their proportional reasoning strategies were analyzed. In the light of such analytical results, the conclusions are as follows. Firstly, there is not much difference between 5th and 6th grade students in the achievement scores. Secondly, both 5th and 6th graders are less familiar with the geometric, qualitative and comparisons tasks than the other tasks. Thirdly, not only 5th graders but also 6th graders used informal strategies much more than the formal strategy. Fourthly, some students can't come up with other strategies than the cross product strategy. Finally, many students have difficulties in discerning proportional situation and non-proportional situations. This study provided suggestions for improving teaching proportional reasoning in elementary schools in Korea as follows: focusing on letting students use their informal strategies fluently in geometric, qualitative, and comparisons tasks as well as algebraic, quantitative, and missing value tasks focusing on the concept of ratio and proportion instead of enforcing the formal strategy.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.57-79
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• 2022

Current mathematics It is necessary to ensure that ratio and proportion concept is not distorted or broken while being treated as if they were easy to teach and learn in school. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the activities presented in the textbook. Based on prior work, this study reinterpreted the proportional reasoning task from the proportional perspective of Beckmann and Izsak(2015) to the multiplicative structure of Vergnaud(1996) in four ways. This compared how they interpreted the multiplicative structure and relationships between two measurement spaces of ratio and rate units and proportional expression and proportional distribution units presented in the revised textbooks of 2007, 2009, and 2015 curriculum. First, the study found that the proportional reasoning task presented in the ratio and rate section varied by increasing both the ratio structure type and the proportional reasoning activity during the 2009 curriculum, but simplified the content by decreasing both the percentage structure type and the proportional reasoning activity. In addition, during the 2015 curriculum, the content was simplified by decreasing both the type of multiplicative structure of ratio and rate and the type of proportional reasoning, but both the type of multiplicative structure of percentage and the content varied. Second, the study found that, the proportional reasoning task presented in the proportional expression and proportional distribute sections was similar to the previous one, as both the type of multiplicative structure and the type of proportional reasoning strategy increased during the 2009 curriculum. In addition, during the 2015 curriculum, both the type of multiplicative structure and the activity of proportional reasoning increased, but the proportional distribution were similar to the previous one as there was no significant change in the type of multiplicative structure and proportional reasoning. Therefore, teachers need to make efforts to analyze the multiplicative structure and proportional reasoning strategies of the activities presented in the textbook and reconstruct them according to the concepts to teach them so that students can experience proportional reasoning in various situations.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.457-484
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• 2015

This study aims to investigate an approach to teach proportional reasoning in elementary mathematics class by analyzing the proportional strategies the students use to solve the proportional reasoning tasks and their percentages of correct answers. For this research 174 sixth graders are examined. The instrument test consists of various questions types in reference to the previous study; the proportional reasoning tasks are divided into algebraic-geometric, quantitative-qualitative and missing value-comparisons tasks. Comparing the percentages of correct answers according to the task types, the algebraic tasks are higher than the geometric tasks, quantitative tasks are higher than the qualitative tasks, and missing value tasks are higher than the comparisons tasks. As to the strategies that students employed, the percentage of using the informal strategy such as factor strategy and unit rate strategy is relatively higher than that of using the formal strategy, even after learning the cross product strategy. As an insightful approach for teaching proportional reasoning, based on the study results, it is suggested to teach the informal strategy explicitly instead of the informal strategy, reinforce the qualitative reasoning while combining the qualitative with the quantitative reasoning, and balance the various task types in the mathematics classroom.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.791-810
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• 2017

This study explored the possibility of using visual models in teaching proportional reasoning based on the review of previous studies. Many studies on proportional reasoning emphasize that students tend to simply apply formal procedures without understanding the meaning behind them and that using visual models may be an alternative to help students develop informal strategies and proportional reasoning. Given these, we re-constructed and implemented the unit of a textbook to teach sixth graders proportional reasoning with ratio table, double number line, and double tape diagram. The results of this study showed that such visual models helped students understand the meaning of proportion, explore the properties of proportion, and solve proportional problems. However, several difficulties that students experienced in using the visual models led us to suggest cautionary notes when to teach proportional reasoning with visual models. As such, this study is expected to provide empirical information for textbook developers and teachers who teach proportional reasoning with visual models.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.21-58
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• 2015

The aim of this study is to look into the didactical background for teaching proportional reasoning in elementary school mathematics and offer suggestions to improve teaching proportional reasoning in the future. In order to attain these purposes, this study extracted and examined key ideas with respect to the didactical background on teaching proportional reasoning through a theoretical consideration regarding various studies on proportional reasoning. Based on such examination, this study compared and analyzed textbooks used in the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. In the light of such theoretical consideration and analytical results, this study provided suggestions for improving teaching proportional reasoning in elementary schools in Korea as follows: giving much weight on proportional reasoning, emphasizing multiplicative comparison and discerning between additive comparison and multiplicative comparison, underlining the ratio concept as an equivalent relation, balancing between comparisons tasks and missing value tasks inclusive of quantitative and qualitative, algebraic and geometrical aspects, emphasizing informal strategies of students before teaching cross-product method, and utilizing informal and pre-formal models actively.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.103-121
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• 2008

The primary purpose of this study was to gather knowledge about $5^{th},\;6^{th},\;and\;7^{th}$ graders' proportional reasoning ability by investigating their reactions and use of strategies when encounting proportional or nonproportional problems, and then to raise issues concerning instructional methods related to proportion. A descriptive study through pencil-and-paper tests was conducted. The tests consisted of 12 questions, which included 8 proportional questions and 4 nonproportional questions. The following conclusions were drawn from the results obtained in this study. First, for a deeper understanding of the ratio, textbooks should treat numerical comparison problems and qualitative prediction and comparison problems together with missing-value problems. Second, when solving missing-value problems, students correctly answered direct-proportion questions but failed to correctly answer inverse-proportion questions. This result highlights the need for a more intensive curriculum to handle inverse-proportion. In particular, students need to experience inverse-relationships more often. Third, qualitative reasoning tends to be a more general norm than quantitative reasoning. Moreover, the former could be the cornerstone of proportional reasoning, and for this reason, qualitative reasoning should be emphasized before proportional reasoning. Forth, when dealing with nonproportional problems about 34% of students made proportional errors because they focused on numerical structure instead of comprehending the overall relationship. In order to overcome such errors, qualitative reasoning should be emphasized. Before solving proportional problems, students must be enriched by experiences that include dealing with direct and inverse proportion problems as well as nonproportional situational problems. This will result in the ability to accurately recognize a proportional situation.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.105-129
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• 2016

The elements of mathematical processes include mathematical reasoning, mathematical problem-solving, and mathematical communications. Proportion reasoning is a kind of mathematical reasoning which is closely related to the ratio and percent concepts. Proportion reasoning is the essence of primary mathematics, and a basic mathematical concept required for the following more-complicated concepts. Therefore, the study aims to analyze the proportion reasoning ability of sixth graders of primary school who have already learned the ratio and percent concepts. To allow teachers to quickly recognize and help students who have difficulty solving a proportion reasoning problem, this study analyzed the characteristics and patterns of proportion reasoning of sixth graders of primary school. The purpose of this study is to provide implications for learning and teaching of future proportion reasoning of higher levels. In order to solve these study tasks, proportion reasoning problems were developed, and a total of 22 sixth graders of primary school were asked to solve these questions for a total of twice, once before and after they learned the ratio and percent concepts included in the 2009 revised mathematical curricula. Students' strategies and levels of proportional reasoning were analyzed by setting up the four different sections and classifying and analyzing the patterns of correct and wrong answers to the questions of each section. The results are followings; First, the 6th graders of primary school were able to utilize various proportion reasoning strategies depending on the conditions and patterns of mathematical assignments given to them. Second, most of the sixth graders of primary school remained at three levels of multiplicative reasoning. The most frequently adopted strategies by these sixth graders were the fraction strategy, the between-comparison strategy, and the within-comparison strategy. Third, the sixth graders of primary school often showed difficulty doing relative comparison. Fourth, the sixth graders of primary school placed the greatest concentration on the numbers given in the mathematical questions.