We, living in 21st century, are necessarily required to have abilities to select what we need from the vast of information and knowledge and to put them in practical use as we want. To meet these needs, each country is accelerating its effort for Educ...
We, living in 21st century, are necessarily required to have abilities to select what we need from the vast of information and knowledge and to put them in practical use as we want. To meet these needs, each country is accelerating its effort for Educational Reform on Mathematics, looking for new direction to improve "Mathematical Grounding" and "Mathematical Power". Accordingly, this study is to develop the suitable questions stimulating student's interest in mathematics, undertake a class of teaching with open-ended problem, which can enhance the ability of problem solving and evaluate the response of students to the questions.
For this study, the following research aims were set and a case study was performed.
First, develop the open-ended problem to be used at each level of phase '4-Ga' in the perspective of development by analyzing the 7th Mathematics Curriculum.
Second, apply the designed open-ended problem to the different level of learning and the class model of open-ended problem solving.
Third, analyze the creative response of sampled students observed during the course of open-ended problem solving.
In chapter II, I have investigated how open-ended problem solving class can be utilized to enhance the mathematical creativeness with the theoretical foundation and analyzed preceding research related to this study.
Chapter III has presented the characteristics of the sampled students, research process, how to gather the data and analysis formula of creative response.
In chapter IV, I have developed the open-ended problem to be used at phase 4-Ga and selected analysis task for creative response and also provided how to apply the open-ended problem to the class and evaluation criteria for each task.
In chapter V, I have analyzed the mathematical creativity based on an analysis formula of creative responses collected from the sampled students in open-ended problem solving class, and an evaluation criteria of each task.
With preceding research and theoretical analysis, I have setup the perspective of open-ended problem and developed twenty three(23) open-ended problems to be applied to each level of phase '4-Ga'. Those open-ended problems were applied to different level of learning and the class model of open-ended problem. Six(6) tasks were selected which were worth for analysis and suitable for open-ended problem and evaluation criteria was setup based on creativity (fluency, flexibility, originality) of each task. This study was performed with five 4th grade students, male and female (two in high, two intermediate, and one in the low level) at an elementary school in ICHEON, where the researcher is working. The scores of creative response from students was analyzed and described.
The findings through this study are as followings.
First, the expression of fluency precedes that of flexibility and originality in open-ended problem solving.
Second, systematic approach to problem solving can be the basis to improve the quality of fluency and originality.
Third, fluency, flexibility and originality are dependent on the level of student in open-ended problem solving, especially distinct in originality.
Fourth, the understanding of Mathematical characteristic or relationship benefits the improvement on fluency, flexibility and originality.
Finally, the research on development of open-ended problem by grade and level should be continued to help the teachers utilize them easily, and further research would be required on precision, a factor of creativeness in Mathematics, since this precision was excluded in this study.