The Study Of The Image Of Mathematicians In The Minds Of Students

Mathematics is an important basic discipline that enjoys a peculiar property:on the one hand,its highly abstractness and rigorous logicality can improve students'mathematical literacy as future citizens;on the other hand,it is also because of the ion and logic of mathematics,students are difficult to form a pleasant learning experience on mathematics.Students' cognition of mathematicians can reflect their attitude to mathematics learning,and have an important influence on students'mathematics learning.And students as possible successors to the mathematical cause,their negative stereotypes of mathematicians are likely to reduce their willingness and interest to pursue math related business.Improve or eliminate the negative stereotypes of students on the mathematician,not only can increase the interest of students in mathematics learning,but also can help students to view the mathematicians and the mathematical industry rationally and purely.Understanding students' images of mathematicians is conductive to change the practical maths teachers' teaching ideas and then their teaching methods,also provide the basic material for making targeted intervention to students' images of mathematicians.Based on the existing research of the image of mathematicians,this paper mainly uses the DAST test-based questionnaire to investigate the images that 194 students from three different schools and different grades hold of mathematicians.This paper mainly investigates the external images of the mathematicians,the personality quality of the mathematicians,the students' willingness to engage in math-related profession,the origin of the images of mathematicians and the knowledge of mathematicians.Through the analysis of the questionnaires,we aim to have a fully understanding of images of mathematicians that students from western China hold and explore the grade and gender differences.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)most middle school students have stereotypical images of mathematicians.Most of students believe that mathematicians are male,which has a significant gender difference.It seems like the figures of mathematicians in students' drawings are mostly based on their math teachers and the representations of mathematicians in popular culture.(2)Students might knew nothing about mathematicians' work.In their minds,mathematicians are thinking or calculating about some difficult math problems or some easy arithmetic or geometry problems which are similar with what students learn at their classrooms behind the desk or before the blackboard seriously.Most students hold stereotypes that mathematicians work indoor and working alone.Some students even think mathematicians are not good at having communication with the outside world.(3)A few students hold stereotype that mathematicians are different from others and do not belong to the same world with students,especially the girls.(4)More and more students are reluctant to engage in math-related occupations when they get older.Lack of confidence and lack of interest are the main reasons that prevent students from engaging the related jobs.(5)The mass media and school society are the main sources of students,images of mathematicians,no grade and gender differences.This paper also discusses the influence on students' images of mathematicians from the aspects of school education,mass media and family education and puts forward some suggestions to improve students' negative stereotypes on mathematicians.The study of the image of scientists has been carried out at home and abroad,but the researchers from abroad started earlier and domestic research is currently at the initial stage.However,foreign researchers have begun to study the image of mathematicians in different countries because of the importance of mathematics and the uniqueness of mathematicians.But there is no related investigation in our country.This study can not only provides reference for practical maths teachers in our country,but also offer a basis for the comparison of international study.