Aesthetic Mathematics In Middle School's Mathematics Curriculum

With the deeper understanding of the value of mathematics education, the aesthetic mathematics is in the concern once more. Adding an aesthetic image to mathematics curriculum can realize the intellectual and sentimental request. So it can embody the aims of mathematics education better. Several researchers have made effort to discuss the relationship of the aesthetics and mathematics curriculum. The problem with all these work is that they always describe the value, the meaning, the use of aesthetics in mathematics education and draw conclusions from mathematics teaching experience, lacking scientific instructions on how to practice and systematical design of mathematics curriculum.From the cultural perspective, this paper explores the question about how to integrate aesthetics into mathematics curriculum, in order to solve the above problem. On the groundwork of the available concepts of "aesthetic mathematics", make clear what the meaning it is. Aesthetic mathematics is the dialectical integration of perceptibility and rationality, subjectivity and objectivity, process and result. The external structure, the internal logic, the beauty from application and creation are three aspects of it. The paper puts emphasis on the "subjective" and "process" characteristic of aesthetic mathematics. Then, analyze a set of junior middle school's mathematics textbooks and suggest some propositions on the history of mathematics, the mathematical activities, the connection of mathematical knowledge, the use of modern teaching technology. After that, the paper illustrates three functions of aesthetic mathematics in the curriculum. They are the aesthetic effect, the methodical effect, and the cultural effect. In fact, it is the confirmation about the value of mathematics beauty. Based on modern curriculum theory, the paper probes how the relative factors influence the incorporation of aesthetics and mathematics curriculum. The "students" factor emphasizes the students' mathematical experience and how the aesthetic feeling begins. The "knowledge" factor indicates that we should focus on the process of doing mathematics, and turn the abstractive mathematical object into an interesting activity. The "society" factor considers aesthetic mathematics...