The Research On The Comprehension Of Vector Of Novice Mathematics Teachers

The outline of mathematical teaching in the full-time ordinary high school promulgated by China ministry of education in 1996 stipulated “plane vector” as a compulsory course.Space vector as another tool to solve space vector problems, ever since,has got into the courses of high school mathematics; China ministry of education stipulated the plane vector as a required course in module 4 and space vector as an elective in module2-1 in 2003. The vector has become more and more important in high school mathematics,but how do the level of novice teachers understanding? How do the novice teachers find the limitation of them and come close to experienced teacher became an important problem.In order to solve these problems, this paper is based on SOLO theory. The author investigated and interview 91 novice mathematics teachers, whose teaching experiences are between 0 and 5 years about following content: the concept of vector, vector arithmetic,geometric meaning of vector and the application of vector.From the above statistical analysis, the writer draw the following conclusion: the novice mathematics teacher can’t understanding the nature of vector deeply, neither can they understand the concept of the vector clearly and thoroughly. On the face of it, novice mathematics teachers can use the vector to solve the conventional case, but its essence is using the analytic geometry and points’ coordinate to solve problem. According to the SOLO theory, the apprehensive level of 70% novice mathematics teachers is in the level of2, 20% novice mathematics teachers in the level of 3, only 5% novice mathematics teachers in the level of 4. In another word, seemingly, all the novice teachers can understand vector, and all of them can solve problems by vector but they can not understand the nature of the vector indeed, just depending on the points’ coordinate to solve problems.