A Study On The Form Of Inquiry Content In Middle School Mathematics Textbooks

As a part of culture,mathematics is characterized by the expression of a spirit of exploration.In order to adapt to the development of The Times and meet the requirements of personnel training,the reform of mathematics curriculum in China emphasizes the importance of mathematical inquiry learning."Compulsory education mathematics curriculum standard(2011 Edition)" requires that the mathematics content learned by students should be beneficial to students' active observation,experiment,guessing,verification,reasoning and communication.Effective mathematics learning activities cannot simply rely on imitation or memory,practice,independent exploration and cooperative communication are all important ways for students to learn mathematics.All versions of Mathematical Textbooks in China have been revised according to this standard.Textbook design contains a large number of mathematical inquiry contents to guide students to form this new learning way.In this area,the mathematics textbooks used in middle schools are all published by PEP.Therefore,this version was chosen to be an object.The quantitative analysis of the inquiry content in the junior middle school mathematical textbook was made from five aspects: distribution,type,organization form,open level and skill application.Combined with the interviews,several features are summed up:(1)A large number of inquiring columns are widely distributed;(2)The type of inquiry content is rich with declarative knowledge;(3)The form of inquiry is insufficient and lack of cooperation;(4)The transparency level of inquiry is generally low and there is no obvious difference among them;(5)The application of skills embodies the characteristics of the subject and lays emphasis on the training of basic inquiry skills.On the basis of the conclusion above,the study puts forward the proposal of writing the inquiry content in the textbooks as follows:(1)Increasing procedural knowledge appropriately to keep the type of mathematical inquiry content in balance;(2)Increasing the consideration of inquiry form appropriately to enhance the cooperation consciousness between teachers and students in mathematical inquiry;(3)Reducing the direct presentation of inquiry elements to improve the open level of mathematical inquiry.Suggestions for using the inquiry content in textbooks are as follows:(1)To avoid the overall acceptance of inquiry materials in textbooks;(2)To avoid making the inquiry process formality and ignoring details;(3)To avoid the uniqueness of the inquiry results and ignoring the unexpected gains.