Magister Educationis - MEd / The study is located within the project: Relevance of School Mathematics Education (ROSME) of the Department of Didactics at the University of the Western Cape. The research is undertaken in the belief that Mathematics enables creative and logical reasoning about contextualised problems in the realm of the physical and social world as well as in the discipline mathematics itself. Relevance of school Mathematics has the implied notion of contextual issues. This research attempts to investigate the contextual issues that teachers have to deal with in Mathematics education. Given the results of the TIMMS report, this research aims to investigate, through comparison, the context preferences between a selected group of practicing teachers in South Africa and those of their counterparts in South Korea.

<p>The National Curriculum Statement introduced mathematical literacy officially in 2006. Learners in general perform poorly at mathematics in South Africa but there is strong belief that learners should graduate from schools sufficiently literate to deal with the mathematical issues they will encounter in out-of-school situations. Based on this, this study is an investigation of the contexts, which grades 8 &ndash / 10 learners would prefer to engage with mathematics. The aim of this study was thus to investigate mathematical literacy in relation to learners&rsquo / motivations for the contexts they would prefer to deal with in mathematical literacy. The emphasis of the study is to concentrate on learner&rsquo / s written motivations for mathematical contexts. Data were collected using a questionnaire that deals with contexts for mathematics.</p>

<p>The National Curriculum Statement introduced mathematical literacy officially in 2006. Learners in general perform poorly at mathematics in South Africa but there is strong belief that learners should graduate from schools sufficiently literate to deal with the mathematical issues they will encounter in out-of-school situations. Based on this, this study is an investigation of the contexts, which grades 8 &ndash / 10 learners would prefer to engage with mathematics. The aim of this study was thus to investigate mathematical literacy in relation to learners&rsquo / motivations for the contexts they would prefer to deal with in mathematical literacy. The emphasis of the study is to concentrate on learner&rsquo / s written motivations for mathematical contexts. Data were collected using a questionnaire that deals with contexts for mathematics.</p>

Magister Educationis - MEd / The National Curriculum Statement introduced mathematical literacy officially in 2006. Learners in general perform poorly at mathematics in South Africa but there is strong belief that learners should graduate from schools sufficiently literate to deal with the mathematical issues they will encounter in out-of-school situations. Based on this, this study is an investigation of the contexts, which grades 8 - 10 learners would prefer to engage with mathematics. The aim of this study was thus to investigate mathematical literacy in relation to learners' motivations for the contexts they would prefer to deal with in mathematical literacy. The emphasis of the study is to concentrate on learners' written motivations for mathematical contexts. Data were collected using a questionnaire that deals with contexts for mathematics. / South Africa

Magister Educationis - MEd / 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.

<p>One of the key ideas in the research on mathematics education is that the mathematical knowledge that learners acquire is strongly tied to the particular situation in which it is learnt. This study investigated the contexts that learners in grades eight, nine and ten prefer to deal with in the learning of mathematics based on their personal, social, societal, cultural and contextual concerns or affinities. The study is situated in the large-scale project called the Relevance of School Mathematics Education II (ROSMEII), which is concerned with the application and the use of mathematical knowledge and processes in real life situations. It is based on a survey of learners from ten (10) secondary schools in the Oshana and Khomas regions of Namibia. The ten schools that were sampled represent the spectrum of schools in Namibia in both urban and semi-urban areas. The Rasch model of data analysis is employed to provide some insight into the contextual situations learners would like to deal with in their mathematical learning. The data obtained for this study was analysed using the WINSTEPS Version 3.65.0 suite of computer programs. The current study arises from a concern about the absence of the voices of learners in the contextual situations in mathematics selected by adults such as mathematics teachers, inspectorates and curriculum and materials developers. The assumption is that the inclusion of learners&rsquo / insights into mathematics curricular might enhance mathematical learning. The study reveals that school children have an intrinsic desire to learn about mathematical issues embedded in real-life contexts. Several items which Namibian learners have shown interest in are issues they experience in life out of school which are not directly dealt with in school, such as managing personal and financial affairs, health matters, technology, construction, engineering and government financial matters. However, learners indicated to have a low preference in contexts like lotteries and gambling, national and international politics, cultural products, all kinds of pop music and dancing. This thesis contends that the inclusion of contexts in the mathematics curriculum which are of interest to learners will go a long way in facilitating good performance of learners in mathematics.</p>

<p>One of the key ideas in the research on mathematics education is that the mathematical knowledge that learners acquire is strongly tied to the particular situation in which it is learnt. This study investigated the contexts that learners in grades eight, nine and ten prefer to deal with in the learning of mathematics based on their personal, social, societal, cultural and contextual concerns or affinities. The study is situated in the large-scale project called the Relevance of School Mathematics Education II (ROSMEII), which is concerned with the application and the use of mathematical knowledge and processes in real life situations. It is based on a survey of learners from ten (10) secondary schools in the Oshana and Khomas regions of Namibia. The ten schools that were sampled represent the spectrum of schools in Namibia in both urban and semi-urban areas. The Rasch model of data analysis is employed to provide some insight into the contextual situations learners would like to deal with in their mathematical learning. The data obtained for this study was analysed using the WINSTEPS Version 3.65.0 suite of computer programs. The current study arises from a concern about the absence of the voices of learners in the contextual situations in mathematics selected by adults such as mathematics teachers, inspectorates and curriculum and materials developers. The assumption is that the inclusion of learners&rsquo / insights into mathematics curricular might enhance mathematical learning. The study reveals that school children have an intrinsic desire to learn about mathematical issues embedded in real-life contexts. Several items which Namibian learners have shown interest in are issues they experience in life out of school which are not directly dealt with in school, such as managing personal and financial affairs, health matters, technology, construction, engineering and government financial matters. However, learners indicated to have a low preference in contexts like lotteries and gambling, national and international politics, cultural products, all kinds of pop music and dancing. This thesis contends that the inclusion of contexts in the mathematics curriculum which are of interest to learners will go a long way in facilitating good performance of learners in mathematics.</p>

Magister Educationis - MEd / One of the key ideas in the research on mathematics education is that the mathematical knowledge that learners acquire is strongly tied to the particular situation in which it is learnt. This study investigated the contexts that learners in grades eight, nine and ten prefer to deal with in the learning of mathematics based on their personal, social, societal, cultural and contextual concerns or affinities. The study is situated in the large-scale project called the Relevance of School Mathematics Education II (ROSMEII), which is concerned with the application and the use of mathematical knowledge and processes in real life situations. It is based on a survey of learners from ten (10) secondary schools in the Oshana and Khomas regions of Namibia. The ten schools that were sampled represent the spectrum of schools in Namibia in both urban and semi-urban areas. The Rasch model of data analysis is employed to provide some insight into the contextual situations learners would like to deal with in their mathematical learning. The data obtained for this study was analysed using the WINSTEPS Version 3.65.0 suite of computer programs. The current study arises from a concern about the absence of the voices of learners in the contextual situations in mathematics selected by adults such as mathematics teachers, inspectorates and curriculum and materials developers. The assumption is that the inclusion of learners’ insights into mathematics curricular might enhance mathematical learning. The study reveals that school children have an intrinsic desire to learn about mathematical issues embedded in real-life contexts. Several items which Namibian learners have shown interest in are issues they experience in life out of school which are not directly dealt with in school, such as managing personal and financial affairs, health matters, technology, construction, engineering and government financial matters. However, learners indicated to have a low preference in contexts like lotteries and gambling, national and international politics, cultural products, all kinds of pop music and dancing. This thesis contends that the inclusion of contexts in the mathematics curriculum which are of interest to learners will go a long way in facilitating good performance of learners in mathematics. / South Africa