Teacher's Knowning Of The Concept Of Probability And Its Teaching

With the development of curriculum reform, the probability had been an important content in the math curriculum of elementary and secondary school. As the probability instruction was influenced by the teacher's knowing of the concept of probability and its instruction, the research about probability instruction proved to be an urgent need.There were three parts in the thesis. The first part explained the reasons, the review and the methods of the study.The second part introduced the results of this study. The findings of the following five research questions were presented in Chapters 3 and 4. What were teachers' comprehensions of classic, geometric, frequent and axiomic definition of probability? If teachers had common mistakes observed among school students such as simple compound approach? Did the teachers have better understanding using permutations and combinations to solve simple problem? Did they design a simulation to estimate the probability of an event? What teaching strategies did teachers respond to the belif of probability is useless?The research results could be concluded that senior high school teachers inclined to explain the meaning of probability value by the angle of theory. Half part of urban junior high school teachers explained the meaning of probability value by the angle of experiment, while the others explained it by theory. Village junior high school teachers intended to explain it by the angle of experiment. Two mistakes, simple compound approach and outcome approach, which commonly observed among students existed among the teachers. When Coping with simple problems, most of the teachers calculated probability by permutations and combinations or by analyzing the tree diagrams, rarely by designing simulations to estimate probability by relative frequency. Junior high school teachers especially those from village had limited knowledge of permutations and combinations and payed little attention to estimating probability by relative frequency. As responses to the belif of probability is useless, there were two different ways among teachers. Junior high school teacher mainly explained by the aspect of experiment while senior high school teacher preferred to reason with examples and analyzed theoretically.The last part of the thesis summarized the general conclusions of the study again. Further more, some suggestions to teachers, schools and department of educational management were put forward to.