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The purpose of the study was to explore how contents related to sustainable development were presented in Japanese, Korean, and Singaporean elementary mathematics textbooks. For this purpose, the contents in the textbooks were analyzed at both macro and micro levels through a mixed method research. The results showed that the sustainability-related contents were included from the third or fourth grade in all the textbooks. The related contents were involved to mathematics content domains of Numbers and Operations, Pattern, and Data and Possibilities. The sustainability-related contents were used both to introduce and to apply mathematical concepts or principles. Most of the sustainable development activities led students to solve problems by using the mathematical contents they had learned, while some other activities induced students to consider sustainability as well as to solve problems. This study is expected to give implications for textbook developers and teachers to connect sustainable development meaningfully to elementary mathematics education.

Purpose: Given the unclear relationship between cognition and affect, this article reports on a study exploring how the conative variable of values may provide some explanation for students with excellent performance despite a negative attitude toward mathematics. Design/Approach/Methods: The study reported in this article represents Korea's participation in the international "What I Find Important (in my mathematics learning)" [WIFI] study, which assesses the attributes of mathematics learning and teaching that are valued by students. The participants of this study were 816 Korean students who responded to the WIFI questionnaire. Findings: The results of principal component analysis indicated that the following five attributes about mathematics and mathematics pedagogy were valued by Korean students: "understanding," "connections," "fun," "accuracy," and "efficiency." These attributes were further analyzed with relation to student gender, school system, and student confidence. Originality/Value: Korean students' valuing of "understanding" and "connections" is noteworthy. It is hoped that the findings of this study might explain Korean students' exceptional performance despite a generally low affective mode, and extending this further, how values in mathematics education might be a useful construct to help us make sense of the observed mismatch globally between high performance and low affect.

It is important for students to develop a relational understanding of the equal sign, but students often have simultaneous operational and relational conceptions (i.e., SOR conceptions). This case study carefully explored how a student's conception of the equal sign changed during a classroom teaching experiment and analyzed the possibilities and difficulties in developing the student's conception of the equal sign. At first, the student demonstrated her understanding of only those equations in the form a ± b = c by using the operational conception of the equal sign. Given an unfamiliar equation in the form a ± b = c ± d = e, the student revealed the relational conception but still evaluated an incorrect equation as correct using the operational conception. Her SOR conception did not change easily despite considerable classroom discussion. When the teacher explained the meaning of the equal sign and connected it with a pan balance, the student understood the meaning of quantitative sameness of the equal sign and showed a stable relational conception. Later, in equations of the form a ± b = c ± d, the student's conception progressed to the comparative relational conception. Given the progression, this study focused on the noticeable shifts in the student's conceptions of the equal sign, and this article discusses both theoretical and pedagogical implications regarding students' conceptions of the equal sign.

Given the significance of functional thinking as one of the main routes to foster early algebraic thinking, in this paper we describe how a current elementary mathematics textbook's unit titled "Pattern and Correspondence" was developed in the Korean context. The following four key instructional elements for fostering functional thinking were extracted from the literature review: (a) correspondence relationships in real-life contexts; (b) various pattern tasks; (c) exploration for a correspondence relationship; and (d) symbol variables to represent a correspondence relationship. These elements were employed to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the unit covering pattern and correspondence in the previous mathematics textbook. Based on this analysis, a new draft for the pattern and correspondence unit was designed and implemented in an elementary school to test its appropriateness and ability to enhance students' functional thinking. Students' responses using the new draft were analyzed in terms of the four elements. Performance between the students with the new draft and their counterparts with the previous textbook was compared. The students with the new draft were more successful than their counterparts in exploring and representing the relationship between two quantities. The final version of the unit was developed and has been applied to all schools. The whole process of developing the unit can be an example of how to foster functional thinking through changes to curricular resources.

Many primary school students have difficulties understanding mathematical equivalence with considerably poorer performance in some countries than in others. However, students' formal understanding of equivalence has significant and long-lasting effects, as it predicts arithmetic and algebra achievement throughout school years. Currently, little is known about the factors influencing students' understanding of mathematical equivalence particularly across different countries. We have conducted the first large-scale study to explore the factors associated with primary school students' understanding of mathematical equivalence across six countries (China, England, New Zealand, South Korea, Turkiye, and the United States). Participants were 2,760 primary school students and their teachers (N = 108). Using multilevel structural equation modeling, we found that students' knowledge of definitions of the equals sign relates to their equation-solving performance. We also found that while teachers' knowledge of students' relational strategies does relate to students' understanding of equivalence, teachers' knowledge of students' operational strategies, and the format of arithmetic practice presented in the students' current year textbooks do not. Using England as the reference country, we found that this pattern was similar across the samples from all the participating countries. Taken together, our findings have important theoretical and practical implications, providing a more complete picture of the individual and classroom-level factors associated with students' understanding of equivalence.

Despite many studies on students' understanding of the equal sign, little attention has been paid to whole-class discourse on their conceptions of equations with two equal signs. This study analyzed the classroom discourse of 30 fourth graders in Korea who participated in a 5-week classroom teaching experiment. A series of discussions on specific equations with two equal signs showed that the students had subtle but significantly different conceptions of the equal sign, even though they often shared the common approach of saying "is the same as" when referring to the equal sign -- these findings differ from previous studies. Classroom discourse exposed the simultaneous coexistence of various conceptions in a single student's mind, including both operational and relational conceptions of the equal sign. The study's findings argue for and demonstrate the value of learning opportunities to explore equations with two equal signs in a systematic and explicit way.

Given the effect of lesson study on improving the quality of mathematics instruction and supporting teachers' professional development, this paper describes how a lesson study using five practices for mathematics discussion was implemented in the Korean context. This paper then analyzes how the lessons were changed through the lesson study cycle and what the participating teachers learned through lesson study. The results showed that the lessons were changed to specify learning goals for students, to devise mathematical tasks in a rigorous and meaningful way, and to design the lesson structure to maximize students' engagement. The results also demonstrated that the lessons were enhanced by implementing the five practices. Whereas the anticipating practice was well-implemented from the beginning of the lesson study cycle, the connecting practice was fully established only in the final phase of the cycle. The participating teachers learned the importance of detailed lesson planning, realized the complexity of teaching practices, and developed a better understanding of how to utilize students' ideas. Building on these results, it is expected that they will expand our understanding of lesson study and facilitate international dialogue regarding the professional development of in-service mathematics teachers.

Reviews various studies on integrating mathematics and science in the 1990s and discusses some implications for further research. Identifies areas such as the comparison of the nature of mathematics and science, epistemological debates in mathematics and science education, the bases used to emphasize science over mathematics or vice versa, and empirical evidence of the effectiveness of integration. (Contains 90 references.) (Author/ASK)