Browsing by Author "Kim, Sun Hi"

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    Preferred contexts for mathematical literacy of Korean grade 8 - 10 learners
    (University of the Western Cape, 2006) Kim, Sun Hi; Julie, C.; Mbekwa, M.
    The twenty-first century society demands a high level of mathematical literacy. This drove Korean educators to evaluate their students using international mathematics tests such as TIMSS, PISA and IMO. In these tests, Korean students ranked highly among the participating countries. Korean students, however, had done poorly in the application of mathematics in daily life situations as well as in their interest in mathematics in co~parison to those of other countries. Based on these observations, the present study is an investigation on the contexts which Korean grade 8 to 10 students would prefer to deal with mathematics, in order to improve these weak points and thus increase their mathematical power. The aim of this study was thus to investigate mathematical literacy in connection with the relevance of mathematics and mathematical modelling. The study pays more attention to mathematics education 111 real life situations. Data was collected using the ROSME questionnaire that deals with contexts preferred by students for mathematics education. A sample made up of over 1600 learners in grades 8 to 10 were randomly selected from 21 schools. Data collected from these learners was analysed using Kendall's W mean rank method in the SPSS 12.0 program since the data for this study were ordinal. The most important finding of this study was that, "Mathematics that entertains and surprises us" came up the highest ranked item. This indicates that mathematics education must be directed towards raising learners' interests. The lowest ranked item was, "Mathematics used to calculate the number of seats for parliament given to political parties after elections," and this might indicate among other things that political activity does not attract students' interest in a society where the concept of well-being is dominant. In general, Korean learners appear to favour learning mathematics in technological contexts and show less interest in political and agricultural contexts. In conclusion, this study suggests that teachers should use contexts that increase learners' interest in classroom activities. Korea has today become one of the strongest Information Technology countries. Therefore mathematics curricula and textbooks which are appropriate to this context must be provided for more efficient mathematics education. Thus, it becomes imperative that the Korean school system must develop a particular program for nurturing learners' mathematical power. Furthermore, mathematics education policy makers must reconsider whether the current education system, Pyungjunhwa Kyoyuk system, should be used or not.
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    Preferred contexts for mathematical literacy of Korean grade 8-10 learners
    (University of the Western Cape, 2006) Kim, Sun Hi; Julie, C; Mbekwa, Monde; Faculty of Education
    The twenty-first century society demands a high level of mathematical literacy. This drove Korean educators to evaluate their students using international mathematics tests such as TIMSS, PISA and IMO. In these tests, Korean students ranked highly among the participating countries. Korean students, however, had done poorly in the application of mathematics in daily life situations as well as in their interest in mathematics in comparison to those of other countries. Based on these observations, the present study was an investigation on the contexts which Korean grade 8 to 10 students would prefer to deal with mathematics, in order to improve these weak points and thus increase their mathematical power. The aim of the study was to investigate mathematical literacy in connection with the relevance of mathematics and mathematical modelling. The study paid more attention to mathematics education in real life situations.
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    Preferred contexts of Korean youth for the learning of school mathematics (grades 8-10)
    (2012) Kim, Sun Hi; Julie, Cyril; Holtman, Lorna; Mbekwa, Monde
    This study investigated real life situations which learners in South Korea grade 8-10 learners would prefer to be used in school mathematics.This thesis is based on the ROSMEII (Relevance of School Mathematics ducation) questionnaires and interviews, which was used to examine the preferred mathematical learning contexts for South Korean grade 8-10 learners. The study investigates the affective factors that pupils perceive to be of possible relevance for the learning and teaching of mathematic; and is aimed at providing data that might form part of a basis for a local theory of the mathematics curriculum. The standardized ROSMEII survey questionnaire of 23closeended items that relate to some aspects of mathematics on a 4-point Likert-type scale was administered to Korean grade 8-10 learners at the end of compulsory schooling, and mainly 14 to 16 year old cohorts. The data for this study were collected from a sample of 1839 learners drawn from 26 South Korean schools in the year 2009. Interviews were conducted to gauge the pupils‘ preference of the ROSMEII questionnaire contexts and used to validate learners‘ responses. In analyzing their responses, it became clear that, on the average, views expressed were common to all groups of pupils in South Korea (whether male or female, or from the metropolitan, city, or countryside). The clusters of the most preferred mathematical learning contexts are linked to youth culture, which learners are usually and easily engaged with in one way or another. These clusters include the sports, leisure and recreation cluster; planning a journey/popular youth culture cluster the technology cluster; the making of computer games, storing music and videos on CD‘s and Ipods. The lowest preferred mathematical learning contexts are: an agricultural cluster which focuses on agricultural matters and traditional games (yut). In conclusion, this study suggests that teachers should use contexts that increase learners‘ interest in classroom activities. Therefore mathematics curricula and textbooks which are appropriate to this context must be provided in order to provide more efficient mathematics education. It is imperative that the Korean school system must develop a particular program for nurturing learners‘ mathematical power. Furthermore, mathematics education policy makers must reconsider whether the current education system is appropriate, and also listen to learners‘ preferences when designing appropriate mathematics curriculum and textbooks.