Research On The Efficiency Of Cooperation In Mathematics Classrooms For Junior High School Students

Recently, the Chinese government paid great attention to cooperative learning and inquiry learning in mathematics of junior middle school students. The mathematics Curriculum Standard of junior middle school initiated learning styles of independent exploration, hands-on practice, cooperative learning, and reading studies independently and so on. Children in junior middle schools attend to rely on companions by doing one same thing. However, many cooperative activities in junior middle school mathematics become a mere formality and they are not efficient. Besides, there is little research on the efficiency of cooperative exploration at home and abroad. Therefore, it's worth studying the reasons and strategies of insufficient cooperative exploration in mathematics of junior middle schools.This dissertation aims to find out the problems involved in cooperative exploration of junior mathematics and the factors that affect the efficiency by studying the current situation of both teachers and students who use cooperative exploration activities and then propose some strategies and specific teaching plans to make it play a huge role in teaching according to the characteristics and theories of junior middles school students and junior mathematics.The dissertation conducted a survey on 12 teachers and 329 students of 3 schools in Ji'ning, Dongying and Ji'nan by questionnaire and interview. By analyzing the questionnaire, the dissertation found out the following problems of cooperative exploration activities in junior mathematics: low participation of junior students; grouping by anteroposterior positions; unclear division of labor without standards; long-time revision in cooperative exploration; times limits within five to ten minutes; too many irrelevant topics without stopping; no plans before cooperative exploration; no interests in difficult problem situation that is from books; unscientific process that cannot make students understand the high-efficient cooperative exploration.According to the results of questionnaire, the dissertation conducted an interview of both teachers and students and then summarized the reasons of insufficient cooperative exploration activities of junior mathematics: little understanding of the importance and theories of cooperative exploration for both teachers and students; low initiative of students in cooperative exploration; unreasonable grouping of students; unawareness of division of labors; insufficient preparation before cooperative exploration; unreasonable contents; time limits, irrelevant topics and no plans of cooperative exploration; problems in the process of cooperative exploration such as unclear aims, no order and organization of expressing, students with great grades taking the initiative in the activity and keeping discussing when in trouble without thinking other ways; low participation of teachers when tutoring and no timely guiding and inspiring when students face difficulties; evaluation according to the learning results and unawareness of diversification of evaluation.According to the situation, the dissertation proposed some strategies based on the theories, the characteristics of the students and the knowledge of junior mathematics: strengthening the theory learning of cooperative exploration of both teachers and students; motivating the students' interests in cooperative exploration by stressing the importance of cooperative exploration and carrying out colorful activities; designing reasonable contents based on the principles of scientificity, levels, enjoyment and openness; good preparation before the activity and preinstall of the contents, the cognitive difficulties and the process; scientific grouping based on the characteristics of the students the principle of being different in groups and being the same outside the groups; scientific division of labors according to the characteristics of the members and the contents; creating harmonious atmosphere by controlling the time of the activity, handling irrelevant topics and planning the time; making the cooperative exploration more reasonable and scientific by understanding the clear aim, expressing orderly and arranging the links of the activity scientifically; the teachers' being the participator, the motivator, the developer and the guider; making the evaluations from both teachers and the students themselves according to their characteristics. Finally, the dissertation provided specific teaching procedures with preparation before class, teaching steps and reflection after class according to the real teaching situations and then proposed a teaching case.