Research On Project-based Mathematics

Researchers and teachers around the world are interested in all kinds of projects and they have been devoting themselves into the research on project development and implementation because of projects' high effectiveness. Project method is an overall approach to the design of learning environment.A project which is fit for project-based mathematics (PBM) in high school should have three key features. First, it should start with a driving topic that guides instruction and that learners find meaningful and important. Good driving topic should be (1)contextualized, (2) feasible, (3)worthwhile and (4)safe and harmless to our environment. Second, the learners are suggested to create some artifacts which result from students' investigations into the driving topic. PBM focuses on artifact development because students' understanding is constructed, reconstructed and enhanced though the development and publication of the artifacts. Third, Assessing student performance on project work is quite different from assessing traditional classwork. To promote student learning, a variety of people-students, experts, teachers, and community members-can provide feedback and assessment which is continuous and taken in multi-dimension.Follow the six steps below, we can get a good PBM curriculum: first, identify learning goals that aligns with national standards; second, select driving topics which students can design and perform investigations to finish the tasks with accessible resource; third, describe your topics in detail with driving questions and challengeable tasks which contain rich mathematics content and learners can find meaningful, important and challengeable; forth, design your evaluation form; fifth, contextualized your topics; sixth, made it a whole curriculum including contextualized introduction, relation map, tasks, evaluation form and useful resource links.PBM is new to Chinese teachers, students, school leaders, parents and other community members. We should work hard to develop good PBM curriculum, and it's also true for implementing PBM in high school.