Study On Primary Mathematical Modeling Thought And Cultivating Strategies

The Mathematics Curriculum Standards of Compulsory Education Level (2011) puts forward that we must make students to adapt to the social life and get the necessary basic knowledge, basic skills, basic ideas and basic practice experience of mathematics for further development. Emphasizing mathematical thought is an important connotation of contemporary mathematical quality, which reflects a fundamental direction of international primary mathematical curriculum content reformation. Modeling thought is not only one of the basic ideas of primary mathematics, but also a very important mathematical subject ability and quality requirement. The purpose of this study is to construct the theoretical basis of the primary mathematical modeling thought, explore the elements and modeling thought and the process pattern of modeling teaching, and propose some strategies of fostering modeling thought.Modeling thought is the "bridge" and the basic approach for students to establish a connection of mathematics and the outside world. To cultivate students forming preliminary modeling thought and corresponding modeling capability at the elementary level, is of great significance for improving students’interest and application awareness in mathematics, deepening the reform of primary mathematics curriculum, and comprehensively promoting the quality of education.This study, on the one hand, will construct the theoretical framework of primary mathematical modeling thought by accessing to a large number of theoretical works, which makes our primary mathematical modeling thought is of "rational". Meanwhile, summarize some common ingredients and reconstruct new theoretical and operational system through classifying analysis of the research literatures directly related to the topic. On the other hand, this study will explore students’expressional specific capacities in modeling activities and the process pattern of modeling activities by selecting and analyzing some teaching cases or instances reflecting the modeling thought.The basic conclusions of this study consist of the following four points. First, the primary mathematical curriculum content is suitable for and requires the way presented and implemented by modeling teaching. Second, the primary mathematical modeling thought manifests as four specific capacity elements:problem representation ability, abstract generalization ability, intuitive thinking ability and plausible reasoning ability. Third, the modeling teaching aiming at cultivating modeling thought has the relatively stationary process pattern:creating situations-proposing assumptions-establishing model-solving model-verifying model-applying model. Fourth, we can put forward some strategies to cultivate modeling thought from the following five aspects:creating problem situations, utilizing teaching tools, researching curriculum content, innovating learning styles and changing evaluation form.This study can be considered to be the first time to research comprehensively the theoretical basis and capacity elements of modeling thought and the process pattern of modeling teaching on the basis of referencing and summarizing part of the mathematics teachers’ research content, combined with the analysis of the curriculum content and teaching cases. This study will establish a systematic theoretical and operational system.