Survey And Analysis Of Algorithm Teaching And Learning In High School In New Mathematic Curriculum

The 21st century is an information age and an age of computer and internet beingdeveloped with high-speed . So mathematical courses and information technology should becombined to keep up with the development since high school mathematical courses arefundmental to culminate qualified citizens. A way of the combination is to add algorithm tothe curricula,because algorithm is a bridge between mathematics and computer science. At theend of 20th century, the master of computer science D.E.Knoth came up with " Computerscience is to study algorithm ,and any program which control the operating of computer is a'semi-algorithm'.Every algorithm can be converted to a series of mathematical operation orlogical judgement. "Therefore, there are contents correlated to algorithm in mathematic curricula of highschool in many countries.It can be seen in six countries such asAmerica,Japan,Britin,German,former Soviet Union and the South Korean ,which became atrend in more countries.To comply with this trend ,our country promulgated "the OrdinaryHigh school Mathematics Curricula Standard (Experiment)"in 2003, which firstly includedalgorithm into high school mathematic curricula.And the teaching of algorithm has alreadybacame a hit in the mathematic education research at home and abroad.Those resercheshavealready study algorithm from learn psychology,developing curricula,teachingexperiments,but never focused on the research about the whole present situation of teachingalgorithm.So far, the high school mathematics new curriculum have already entered the second turnof experiment.This is the first time of algorithm being introduced into high school curricula,sowhat is the situation in practice and how does teachers and students know about algorithm ?In additon,what are difficulties and how to overcome them in algorithm teahcing ? Theseare all unknown,although the answers of above questions are very important.Since we want topromote the result of the experiment nationwide,we need to understand exist problems andimprove effectivelyin algorithm teaching to adapt it to special situation in China.We study thepresent situaion of algorithm teaching in high school curricula in this paper.We investigate the following aspects of questions mainly:Firstly,what is the attitude and knowledgement of teachers and students about contents ofalgorithm?Secondly,what is the concept of algorithm to teachers and students?Thirdly,what is the realistic problem ?Fourthly,what is the cognition of teachers and students about the combinantion ofalgorithm thinking and correlated contents?The result of the investigation indicated that it is successful to involve contents ofalgorithm in high school mathematic curricula on the whole.Most teachers and studentswelcome the involement of algorithm and agreed its educating significance,however,there aresome problems in practice:firstly,students are not very interested in algorithm;secondly,theydon't undertand the concept of algorithm completely;thirdly,application of algorithm is notobvious;fourthly,the ancient algorithm content has not obtained deservedemphasis;fifthly,teachers don't gain sufficient support in teaching and train for them doesn'tmake sense.We think the reasons for above problems are as following:firstly, algorithm curriculum hasits own deficiency because it has only macroscopic requirement and lacks specific measure;next, teachers have their own notion which cause problems;besides,curriculun resources arenot sufficient;finally,contents of teachers' train cann't meet teachers' needs.Therefore,We give concrete suggestions about algorithm curriculun and teaching as wellas curriculun resources and train .We hope these could provide reference to the nationalimplementation of the new curriculum and help teahers in their practice.