Changes in mathematics pedagogical lexicons: Extension research of the International Classroom Lexicon using a text mining approach

Gima Lee1   Hee-jeong Kim2,*   

1Graduate Student, Korea University
2Professor, Korea University

Abstract

Research on lexicon and language provides insights into the interests, values and practices of a community where individuals use the language. The International Classroom Lexicon Project, in which ten countries participated, identified own country's mathematics teaching and learning lexicons by investigating mathematics classroom instruction from teachers’ perspectives in a speaking-oriented community. This study, as an extension of the International Classroom Lexicon Project research, investigated pedagogical lexicons used in 「Mathematics and Education」 journals specialized for Korean professional mathematics teachers published by the Korean Society of Teachers of Mathematics. Using the text mining approach, we also traced how these pedegogical lexicons have changed quantitatively over the past 10 years with a diachronic perspective. As a results, several novel terms were found in the writing-oriented community, which were not identified in the speaking-oriented community. In addition, we could discover some pedagogical lexicons have increased statistically significantly and some lexicons appeared(increased) rapidly across years. This implies the teacher community’s values and zeitgeist by reflecting these changes in the sociocultural, incidental and social changing (i.e., periodical change) contexts. This study has value as a first step in understanding zeitgeist for mathematics education in Korean mathematics teacher community according to changes of times over the past 10 years. Also, this study contributes to the methodological insights: the text mining technique provides a methodological contribution to researching changes in interests, values and zeitgeist according to these changes in the times.

Figures & Tables

Figure 1. Steps of analysis