| The Mathematics Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011 Edition)have revised and enriched the ten core concepts,and symbolic awareness is presented as one of them.Symbolic awareness occupies an important place in students’ learning of mathematics,and its development has become an objective of our compulsory education mathematics curriculum.It helps students express themselves symbolically and promotes their understanding of the nature of the subject of mathematics,thus advancing the further development of students’ core literacy in mathematics.Symbolic awareness is one of the ten core concepts in the new curriculum standards,and its research can provide rich theoretical and practical guidelines for teaching symbols and actively promote the teaching of symbolic awareness among primary school mathematics teachers.At present,research on symbolic awareness is mostly confined to the middle and upper primary levels and junior secondary levels,but there is little research on symbolic awareness in the lower primary levels,so it is important for front-line teachers to carry out research on symbolic awareness in the lower primary levels.This study uses primary 1–2 students and primary school mathematics teachers as the subjects and is conducted by means of a questionnaire survey with the aim of understanding the current situation of students’ development of mathematical symbol awareness and teachers’ teaching.The results show that the current development of students’ awareness of mathematical symbols is not rigorous and standardized.Students lack systematic knowledge of symbols,have difficulties understanding the meaning of mathematical symbols,have difficulties understanding the connections between mathematical symbols,and do not have a strong awareness of applying mathematical symbols on their own.The current situation of teachers’ teaching of mathematical symbol awareness was concluded to be that teachers’ awareness of mathematical symbols needed to be improved,teachers lacked a comprehensive understanding of mathematical symbol awareness,teachers did not attach enough importance to teaching mathematical symbol awareness,and teachers lacked the ability to accurately extract symbolic ideas from teaching materials.Based on the findings,this study proposes strategies for developing symbolic awareness in mathematics at the lower primary level at the student and teacher levels,respectively.At the student level,students need to correct their attitudes towards learning mathematical symbols and develop good habits for learning mathematical symbols;use mind maps to build a knowledge network of mathematical symbols;and find symbolic connections to understand and apply mathematical symbols based on contexts.At the teacher level,we need to strengthen the study and reading of the standards to enhance teachers’ symbolic awareness;emphasise the teaching of symbols to gain a comprehensive understanding of mathematical symbolic awareness;and refine the resources of teaching materials to penetrate symbolic ideas in a panoramic manner. |
PDF Full Text Request