Research On The Development Of High School Mathematics Teachers’ Subject Content Knowledge

With the development of international economy and technology, multi-cultures contact and exchange, which have brought unprecedented impact and challenge to mathematics teaching and education from both theory and practice perspectives. Researches on problems arousing after the curriculum reform reveal that the lack of subject accomplishment has constrained education quality and teachers’ professional developments Meanwhile, teachers’ professional development has become the main trend of the worldwide teacher education and construction of teaching faculty in all kinds of schools. Countries all around world have been endeavoring to promote teachers’ professional development by legislation, educational system reform as well as curriculum reform, thereby to improve the education quality.Teachers professional development include three aspects: professional spirit, professional knowledge and professional capabilities. Among them, professional knowledge has become the hot and difficult part in education reform and research. Subject content knowledge serves as the carrier to improve teachers’ professional development, which is also an important part of teachers’ self development and teaching faulty construction, which makes subject content knowledge a vital part to teachers, schools and the society.There are two key elements of mathematic teachers’ subject content knowledge. One is the cognition of knowledge resource; the other is knowledge of clear expression. As far as high school math teachers are concerned, they should not be content with their current subject content knowledge. They are required to develop and improve their subject content knowledge, which will be eventually do good for better development of subject content knowledge.What does it mean by the development of teachers’ subject content knowledge? Briefly it means how to transfer the knowledge in ’science mode’ into knowledge in ’teaching mode’. The latter is the key part of the development of subject content knowledge. To achieve this transfer, some questions need to be asked including what knowledges are required? How to understand those knowledges? What are the ways to grasp those knowledge? On what level? How to evaluate the knowledge development? How to improve the existing knowledge structure?In order to answer the above mentioned questions and to explore the ways to achieve the transfer of knowledge in ’science mode’ into knowledge in ’teaching mode’, the present research mainly explores the following seven aspects.The first part is to make a profound study of subject content knowledge and subject quality.Secondly, the present research is to explain ’understanding’ from philosophical and subject prospectives. The content of ’understanding’ is explored as well as we hold it is not real sense understanding if there is no content.The third part aims to help high school math teachers build subject content knowledge structure. Knowledge in science mode is knowledge stated in science way. If knowledge in teachers’ mind is not in structure, teachers will feel hard to grasp the knowledge as a whole, which will hinder the understanding and construction of the nature of knowledge. The key concepts and its structure will be useful to overcome the above shortcomings. Therefore, the present research systematically study the key concepts, judge criteria and the knowledge structure.In the fourth part, effective way to transfer knowledge in ’science mode’ into knowledge in ’teaching mode’ is explored. Double loop mode (learn-study loop and practice loop) is designed and explained to promote teachers’ subject content knowledge development.Three development levels and seven detailed criteria are put forward in the fifth part according to the theory of cognition development and researches on brain science. Three development levels are intuition level, conception level, and theory level. Seven criteria includes fact, relation, method, knowledge, thoughts, capability and theory.In the sixth part specific operation method and the data processing technology employed by different evaluators are developed.In the last part, with the help of the designed empirical research proposal, an investigation of current situation of high school math teachers is carried out. IRT (Item Response Theory) is used to analyse data. Based on the theory study and empirical research, implications and suggestions are put forward on how to transfer knowledge in ’science mode’ into knowledge in ’teaching mode’.