An Investigation And Study Of Junior High School Students' Beliefs In Mathematics

The mathematics learning theory has witnessed an incessant development.Nowadays,there is an increasing number of researchers paying attention to students'epistemic belief of mathematics.Research has shown that students' epistemic belief of mathematics plays a significant role in the process of studying mathematics.The study of epistemic belief of mathematics is helpful to understand students' mathematical epistemic process and knowledge construction process,which provides a reference for adopting targeted teaching strategies and therefore,helps students to formulate the correct epistemic belief of mathematics.This paper adopts the literature reading method,the questionnaire survey method and the interview research method to study the current situation of junior high school students'mathematical epistemic beliefs,and explores their differences in gender,grade and so forth.After consulting a large amount of literature,the author designed a questionnaire targeting at the students of eight classes in two junior high schools and drew on SPSS to analyse the statistics and make conclusions.In addition,the qualitative research method is also applied.The author conducted four interviews with the four participants,the results of which are combined with the quantitative research.The paper thus discusses how to improve and refine students' epistemic belief of mathematics and puts forward feasible teaching suggestions.The main conclusions of the study are as follows:(1)The epistemic belief of mathematics is a mufti-dimensional belief system which is divided into five dimensions through factor analysis,namely,Stability of mathematics knowledge,structure of mathematics knowledge,mathematics learning ability,mathematics learning mode and mathematics learning speed.In general,junior high school students have a relatively positive attitude towards the epistemic belief of mathematics.However,in terms of mathematics learning mode,students have poor cognition and achieve low average scores.Therefore,it is concluded that students' epistemic belief of mathematics is required to be improved.(2)Gender differences are significant in the dimensions of mathematical learning speed.The grade differences in mathematical learning methods,learning speed and mathematical knowledge beliefs are significant.The students in different schools have significant differences in mathematical learning ability,learning mode,learning speed and mathematical knowledge and belief.(3)All dimensions and overall beliefs show significant positive correlation with interests,hobbies and emotional attitudes.The epistemic belief of mathematics exerts certain influence on students' emotional attitudes and interests.According to regression analysis,it can be concluded that there is a linear relationship between the epistemic belief of mathematics and hobbies,emotional attitudes,which has a positive impact on hobbies and emotional attitudes.(4)Based on data analysis and student interviews,several teaching strategies are put forward:Teachers should fully understand students' beliefs in mathematics knowledge;Situations and lively mathematical questions should be set up;The history of mathematics should be illustrated to enable students to perceive the development of mathematics knowledge;Hierarchical teaching method should be employed to give rise to students'learning faith;Teachers should adopt various kinds of teaching strategies and provide more time for students to think;Variant training can be accepted so that students can find the interest of learning through variability and invariability of mathematics.