Study On History Of Mathematics In High School Textbooks

The "Ordinary High School Mathematics Curriculum Standards (trial version)" points out that mathematics curriculum should introduce properly the history of mathematics, application and tendency, the mutual promotion between society and mathematics, the ideological system of mathematics, the value of mathematics aesthetics and the creative spirit of mathematician......As an important part of mathematical culture, the history of mathematics plays an important role in explaining the mathematical culture and giving impetus to the Character Building Education.Research on the history of mathematics in high school mathematics textbooks of people’s education press(A) and Jiangsu education press is the purpose of this paper, and this paper is from the perspective of comparative study. First of all, this paper finds out the functions of the history of mathematics in textbooks which is based on the analysis on the characteristics of the history of mathematics and the current research. Secondly, this paper give statistics and analysis systematically on the number and type, distribution, the persons in history, information carrier and design patterns about the history of mathematics.Research found that there are three functions in the history of mathematics of textbooks:excitation, cognition and culture. the history of mathematics mainly in the part of Reading and Thinking, and the history in example and exercise is less. Mathematicians involving in history mainly come from China, England, French, German, and the other ancient nations’ are less. The history of mathematics is mainly presented in the form of text, and graphs and charts are less. Many fields are refers to the history of mathematics, especially the computation and physics. The history of people’s education press(A) is more detailed than the Jiangsu education press’ history, at the same time which often focus on the textbook knowledge.Finally, combining with the results of the study, I give some reasonable suggestions about compilation of textbook.