An Investigation Into Creating A Mathematical Problem Context To Enhance Students' Explorative Abilities

Nowadays science and technology are advancing rapidly, which has a higher requirement for education. That is to implement quality education and to foster talents with innovative spirits which are an important subject every teacher has to face. Explorative ability is crucial in scientific innovative activities. To help students develop their explorative ability is the starting point for fostering their capability of creativity and practice. Known as the gym of human mind, mathematics has a unique advantage over others subjects taught in school in fostering students' explorative ability. In the process of teaching mathematics, how to develop this talent is worthy of attention. Many mathematics educators who have done research in this area have assumed that teaching of mathematics can help students' development of their creative ability. However, very little work has been done to investigate the influence of creating a mathematical problem context on students' explorative ability and the practical ways to achieve this;what's more, the methods having been proposed to create such a context are hard to be put into practice because of their non-specificity. This thesis intends to fill these two gaps.This thesis is divided into five parts. Part one discusses the importance and necessity of improving students' explorative ability and the significance and possible applications of this study. Part two explores the association between creating a mathematical problem context and the development of students' explorative ability. In this part, creating a mathematical problem context is redefined and the process of how a mathematical problem context influences students' explorative ability is elaborated. Part three discusses the four principles of creating mathematical problem contexts, followed by some practical suggestions for creating mathematical problem contexts in mathematics teaching made in Part Four. The final part is devoted to some teaching experiments and the conclusions we draw from them.