An Experimental Study On Cultivating Senior High School Students’ Creative Thinking Ability Through Mathematical Modeling Teaching

Today, when quality education has been implemented in an all-round way,cultivating and exploring students’ creative thinking ability has received significantattention. In mathematics teaching, mathematical modeling is closely related tocreative thinking ability, so mathematical modeling has become one of the effectiveways of cultivating students’ creative thinking ability. In fact, in this field, thepreliminary studies have already been made by some professional educators of ourcountry, but most of the studies are limited to the theoretical discussion and has lack ofsupport about empirical studies. However, it’s worth mentioning, in terms of how tocultivate senior high school students’ creative thinking ability through themathematical modeling teaching, the studies is rare, most of which are not thoroughand systemic.Based on the above issues and the current status, this thesis attempts to carry outan experimental study to explore the relationship between mathematical modeling andsenior high school students’ creative thinking ability, and makes an assumption thatmathematical modeling teaching is helpful for high school students to cultivatecreative thinking ability.First, this thesis introduces the background, the purpose and the significance ofthe study, and secondly, makes a review of the theoretical basis on creative thinkingability and mathematical modeling and explores the teaching ideas about cultivatingsenior high school students’ creative thinking ability through the mathematicalmodeling teaching. And then, a further empirical study is conducted, which lasts16weeks. In a common senior high school, two parallel classes are chosen, which belongto Senior2. One acts as an experimental class and the other controlled class. Theauthor carries out the mathematical modeling teaching in the experimental class whileconducts the traditional mathematics teaching in the controlled class. Before theteaching experiments, the tests of the students’ mathematical modeling ability andcreative thinking ability (pre-test1and pre-test2) are done separately to ensure there is no difference in both respects between the two classes. After the experiments, the testsof the students’ mathematical modeling ability and creative thinking ability (post-test1and post-test2) are done. It follows that the data analysis is made and the results areanalyzed and discussed. The studies testify that student’s creative thinking ability in theexperimental class has an obvious improvement. The studies show that themathematical modeling teaching is helpful for senior high school students to cultivatecreative thinking ability.Finally, the thesis points out the main conclusions of this study and provides someteaching inspirations about cultivating senior high school students’ creative thinkingability through mathematical modeling. At the same time, it also illustrates thelimitations of this study one by one.