New Junior High School Mathematics Textbooks Survey

Since the national Ministry of Education promulgated "The Standard of Mathematics Curriculum for full-time Compulsory Education (Trial Draft)" in July 2001, several kinds of standard-based mathematics experimental textbooks were published one after another. Two sets of the textbooks published by East China Normal University press and the Peking Normal University press were examined and approved by the Ministry of Education at first, and leaded off the experiment within the scope of nation. Thus the research on how teachers and students use the two sets of junior high school mathematics textbooks having big influence seems to be very necessary, and also very valuable.In this research, 862 students and 76 teachers of 16 schools from 123 junior high schools for using the two sets of the textbooks were surveyed in the region of Heifei, and the general usage of the two sets of textbooks is described in this research.First, the majority of teachers and students feel satisfied with the new editions mathematics textbooks. Second, textbooks are the main written resources of teaching in most classrooms. The majority of teachers depend highly on mathematics textbooks, and they depend on textbooks in deciding what to teach more than in deciding how to teach. Third, in general, in the using of the mathematics textbook, some teachers' characters, such as the different educational background, the different teaching age, have no significant influence. But there are differences in the using of some materials, such as "project learning", "summarizations" and "reading material". Fourth, there exists a certain margin between the teacher's request and the student's behavior, and a distance lies between potentially implemented curriculum and implemented curriculum.Some other specific and interesting conclusions are also obtained from this study. First, all columns, except "project learning", are emphasized by the teachers. But the students seem enjoy "project learning". Second, the two columns that students like most are "explore" and "reading material" ; Three kinds of teaching methods that students like most in order are "whole class discussion leading by teacher", "manipulation" and "questioning and answering between teachers and students ". Third, over 6/10 of the teachers investigated say they usually or often request their students to read textbook before (or after) lessons and to be active in classroom, while the students' read less than they were expected. Fourth, over 9/10 of the teachers investigated admit that they would like to add some contents appeared in the old textbooks, such as some useful theorems; About 3/4 of the students investigated answer that the time they spend doing exercises outside textbooks is as long as or longer than the time they spend on doing exercises in textbooks. It appears that the burden of junior high school students is still very heavy, and the spirit of the New Standard is still not converted into the teachers' actual behavior.According to the findings of this study, some suggestions for secondary school teachers, curriculum developers and educate supervisors were given at the end of this thesis.