A Comparative Study Of Geometry In Mathematics Textbooks In Junior High School In China And United States

In this study, mathematic textbooks published by the Beijing Normal University press in China and the McGraw-Hill/Glencoe press in America are chosen as the comparative research objects. In the paper, we reckon the “the problems” as a unit of analyzing and “content analysis” was used for researching. Further, we see the “ the system of writing, the proportion of content, the capacity of the special topic, the presentation of concept,the token of issue and the knowledge of properties” as the comparative content. What we all did was to exploring the difference and the identical of the geometry content in the textbook that published by the China and the American respectively.The study found that the China and the United States textbooks are very different in the write system. The amount of "problems" in the US is 1.5 times of the Chinese textbooks. On the other hand, the capacity of the special topic of the textbook published by two countries prefers to the content of triangular and quadrilateral. In addition, the United States attaches great importance to the content of three-dimensional geometry, coordinate and motion graphics, etc and the edition of the China pay more attention to the rest of special issues. The concept of Beijing Normal University textbooks presents as “a spiral structure”. On the sequence of the concept presenting, the Chinese textbooks have priority to the US textbooks, but the Chinese textbooks are short of the content of geometry and the information of how to use the technology is relatively weak. On the token of issue, the two countries have focused on the problem of mathematical characterization and the property of issues exist significant differences in knowledge, the Chinese textbooks more emphasis on the declarative knowledge while the US textbooks more emphasis on the procedural knowledge. According to the study, some conclusions are put up with for the editing and writing of mathematics textbooks: Improving the quantity of mathematics textbooks problems appropriately to increase the opportunities of the students’ learning; The spiral of curriculum should to be more integrated to meet the students’ thinking development. Structuring the form of problem representation diversely to inspire the students’ learning motivation.