An Experimental Research On The Application Of Attributional Homework Correction Method In High School Mathematics Teaching

As one of the most crucial subjects at the high school stage,mathematics plays a key role in laying a stable foundation of mathematical reasoning and logical thinking of students.However,whether or not mathematics can be learned well is affected by many factors such as students' individual characters,teachers' quality,peer effect,and school environment's influence.Among them,teachers' impact on students affects directly on the students' interests in learning,their attitudes to learning,and their academic performance.Based on the current way of instruction in mathematics at high school,correcting students' homework is the most important channel for teachers to evaluate students,and it is also an effective way for teachers and students to communicate with each other.But it has not received enough attention and application in practice.There also have not been either systematical theoretical arguments or efficient empirical evidence on how teachers should correct their assignments in the previous literatures.This study begins with the investigation on homework check adopted by high school mathematics teachers.It has been found that the way of teacher's homework check is simply a judgement on students' answers based on the text analysis of students' assignments with math teachers' check.Teachers' comments are seldom to be found on students' mistakes,no mentioning corresponding suggestions.Secondly,this study investigated on student's perception on their math teacher's way of homework assessment.The survey has shown that students were generally satisfied with mathematics teachers' way in assessing their assignments.However,the ideal way falls into the attributional homework correcting.Thirdly,this study adopted a Random Controlled Trail(RCT)by taking 136 students from two parallel classes taught by the same math teacher in a high school as clustered samples.These two classes are were randomly divided into two groups that are treated group and control group respectively.A two-month-intervention has been done in the treated class as the experiment.The math teacher conducted the attributional homework correction method on students' math assignments while teachers carry out the original method to check students' homework in the control group.The students' mathematics learning attitude and mathematics learning performance were tested by a standardized test and questionnaire survey conducted before and after the intervention respectively to compare the effectiveness of the intervention.The experimental results show that the improvement on mathematics learning attitude of the students in treated group was smaller than the students in control class with 0.8 standard deviations on average.However,the change on mathematics achievement of the treated students was larger than the controlled students with 0.02 standard deviations on average.In addition,boys' attitudes and achievements in mathematics are significantly improved compared with girls'.There is little differences on the learning attitudes and achievements of mathematics between the students living on campus and those living at home.Rural students' improvement on their learning attitudes and achievements of mathematics are slightly higher than urban students'.The progress of attitudes and achievements in mathematics students with higher grades are more obvious than those with lower grades in enrollment examination.Finally,high school mathematics teachers have recognized and approved the importance of assignments check on communication between the students and instructors in the structured interviews.However,the teachers' working time are not used as effectively as possible due to the time consuming work of class management,academic tasks,and other executive duties in school.Simultaneously,high school students believe that the more detailed and specific commends on their assignment they receive,the easier they are able to get effective feedback from their teachers according to the in-depth interviews on students.Based on the analysis of empirical data above,the check process on students' assignments should,on the one hand,take account of the reasoning analysis rather than simply checking in mathematics teachers' instruction practice.Furthermore,it is necessary to follow up the students' correcting process on their mistakes in assignment by carrying out the second round of assignments check.On the other hand,the teachers should take the students' self-checked and mutual-check among peers,the traditional paper-based check and online check on their assignment into account.The last but not the least,the effectiveness of in class instruction would be consolidated,the interaction between teachers and students would be improved,and the efficiency of mathematics instruction would get improved by using attributional homework correction method.