An Analysis Of The Causes Of The Poor Students Of Mathematics In Secondary Vocational Schools Based On Metacognition Theory

With the gradual aging of China’s population, lack of labor has begun to affect the development of all walks of life, especially the shortage of the senior technicians; our secondary vocational education aims at training talents who are highly-qualified and engaged in the production line, and mathematics is a discipline cultivating one’s intellectual development capabilities and plays an irreplaceable role in fostering applied technological talents. However, in the secondary vocational schools most students have difficulties in mathematics, which poses a serious impediment to their development of all aspects. Therefore it is very important to solve mathematical learning difficulties of secondary vocational school students.Since the proposal of meta-cognition theory by Flavell, numerous educationists and psychologists have made researches on this field and applied it into the teaching of basic subjects with great achievements in studies of solving learning difficulties.To begin with, the existing research results on meta-cognition and helping students with mathematics disorders have been reviewed as well as a brief introduction on the definition of meta-cognition and the role it plays in mathematics teaching and learning has been made in this thesis. Then the questionnaires based on meta-cognition have been done on the secondary school students with learning difficulties from three majors of electromechanical, numerical control and accounting which are commonly seen in secondary vocational schools and need a certain mathematics knowledge. Case investigations are also made. According to the data analysis and classroom performances, the main causes in mathematics disorders in secondary school students are as follows:firstly, from the angle of metacognitive knowledge:a) students lack the knowledge of the importance of mathematics and can not master the key points during maths learning; b) their ways of solving maths problems are stiffen and they can only figure out the fixed styles of maths problems; c) mathematical formulas are crammed up instead of digging in; secondly, from the perspective of metacognition experience:a) they get used to long-time copying others’homework and seldom enjoy solving maths problems; b) students have little confidence in mathematics learning which lead to their self-abandonment; c) they have too much difficult times in learning mathematics, as a result, they are afraid of doing maths exercises and hate taking meths classes and end up not having pleasure in mathematics study.As these reasons, starting from the facts of secondary school students withmathematics disorders and the meta-cognition theory,the paper concludes the teaching advice to help those students catch up with others, which are:a) educators should apply the meta-cognition theory into teaching to help improve students’level of metacognition; b) educators should help students foster healthy mathematics learning psychology to gain positive meta-cognition experiences; c) teachers should advance the meta-cognitive monitoring levels through close attention in solving teaching of mathematics problems and developing students’ appropriate learning behaviors.