An Empirical Study Of Cultivating Students’ "Symbol Consciousness" In Junior Middle School Mathematics Teaching

Mathematical literacy is the basic literacy that every citizen in modern society should possess.The "Compulsory Education Mathematics Curriculum Standard(2011 Edition)" clearly puts forward 10 core mathematics qualities,including number sense,symbol awareness,calculation ability,spatial concept,data analysis concept,geometric intuition,reasoning ability,model thinking,application consciousness and innovation consciousness.As one of the core qualities of mathematics,"Symbolic consciousness " has attracted much attention in recent years.Through investigation,it is found that teachers neglect the cultivation of " Symbolic consciousness " in mathematics teaching,which leads to the weaker ability of symbol operation and symbol reasoning in solving mathematics problems.Therefore,this research starts with "teaching",guided by the theory of situational cognition and the theory of variants,designs teaching strategies that effectively cultivate students’ mathematics "Symbolic consciousness" in teaching,and verifies its effectiveness through experiments and investigation research methods.This research paper is divided into three modules.The first module is the preparatory stage: firstly,identify research questions by analyzing student performance and teacher interviews,retrieve relevant documents,and sort out the status quo of research related to " Symbolic consciousness";then select research objects and teaching content,Analyze the teaching objectives based on the "Standards",and then consult a large number of documents,design and formulate teaching strategies and "Symbolic consciousness" evaluation framework.The second module is the experimental stage: before the experiment,design the "Symbolic consciousness" questionnaire and the learning interest questionnaire,choose two classes taught by the same teacher in grade 7 to implement the pre-test,determine the experimental class and the control class;design the teaching plan based on the test results;In the experiment,the control class conducts regular teaching,the experimental class adopts the abovementioned teaching plan for teaching,and at the same time collects experimental data in various aspects;after the experiment,the experimental class and the control class are post-tested,including the "Symbolic consciousness(awareness)" questionnaire,Symbolic consciousness(ability)" test questions,unit tests,collect the mid-term test scores of the control class and experimental class students(screening is related to Symbolic consciousness).The third module is the summary and reflection phase: statistics and analysis of experimental data,verification of experimental hypotheses,experimental conclusions,and teaching suggestions;at the same time,reflecting on the entire experimental process,identifying deficiencies,with a view to improving in subsequent research.Practical research has shown that situational teaching and variant practice strategies can promote and enhance students’ perception and expression of letter symbols and “compliance with operation ability”,that is,the comprehensive application of contextual teaching and variant practice strategies can effectively improve students’ “symbols” Awareness",in which contextual teaching strategies can help students realize the advantages of using alphabetic symbols for mathematical expression in the process from "concrete to generalization".Variation practice strategies help students more through conceptual variations and non-concept variations.Understand the connotation and extension of the concept from a perspective,and deepen the understanding of the concept.This study uses empirical methods to verify that the strategy has a significant effect on enhancing students’ " Symbolic consciousness ",but there are also shortcomings such as short experimental period and small number of experimental samples.Therefore,we hope to extend the experimental period and expand the number of experimental samples in the follow-up research;select other teaching content to carry out research in order to improve the reliability of the conclusions of this research.