A Comparative Study Of High School Mathematics Compulsory Textbook Exercises

To put the fundamental task of moral education into practice,the status of mathematics textbook construction has been raised to the institutional level,and exercises are regarded as a vehicle for the development of students' core literacy in mathematics.A comparative study of textbook exercises aims to understand the strengths and characteristics of each version of textbooks,which is important for textbook writing and exercise teaching.Most of the studies have been conducted to construct a framework for comparative analysis of exercises in terms of their superficial structure and have shown that the teaching effectiveness of exercises needs to be improved.Based on the demand of developing students' core literacy in mathematics,constructing an analytical framework for compulsory mathematics textbook exercises comparison in high school,and comparing the new editions of textbooks of People's Education Press Edition A and Beijing Normal University Edition,in an attempt to analyze the similarities and differences in the design of exercises in the two editions,in order to make contributions in terms of improving the quality of writing and teaching effectiveness of exercises in mathematics textbooks in China.Three research questions were identified:(1)How to construct an analytical framework for compulsory mathematics textbook exercises comparison in high school?(2)What are the similarities and differences of the exercises in the compulsory high school mathematics textbooks of People's Education Press Edition A and Beijing Normal University Edition?(3)What are the characteristics of the exercises in the compulsory high school mathematics textbooks of People's Education Press Edition A and Beijing Normal University Edition? The literature analysis method and expert evaluation method were used to construct an analytical framework for compulsory mathematics textbook exercises comparison in high school;the content analysis method and comparative research method were used to collect,process and test the reliability of the coding data using SPSS 20.0software,and a combination of qualitative and quantitative comparisons was made in terms of both the arrangement system and the coding data.The following findings were obtained:(1)A comparative analysis framework of the exercises was constructed in terms of the number,question type,openness,comprehensive difficulty,and core literacy in mathematics.(2)The two editions of textbooks' exercises were roughly the same in terms of quantity and openness,and differ significantly in terms of question type and core literacy in mathematics: the number of exercises per lesson was about 12;the proportion of open-ended exercises was less than 10%;the proportion of exercises' type in different topics was different;in terms of types of core literacy in mathematics,the proportion of exercises reflecting mathematical operation literacy was higher in the Beijing Normal University Edition,while the proportion of exercises reflecting data analysis was higher in the People's Education Press Edition A;in terms of the level of core literacy,the ratio of exercises in Level 1 to Level 2 is about 3:2,and the ratio of exercises in Level 3 was extremely low.(3)The two editions of the textbook exercises have their characteristics in terms of comprehensive difficulty.In terms of nature,the two editions both focused on transfer and application exercises,with a higher proportion of exercises at the imitation level in the Beijing Normal University Edition and a higher proportion of exercises at the exploration level in the People's Education Press Edition A.In terms of background,there was no significant difference between the two editions,with less than 5% of the exercises in the science background.In terms of knowledge content,they both focused on exercises requiring 2 to 3 knowledge points for problem solving,with a higher proportion of exercises with 1 knowledge point in the Beijing Normal University Edition and a higher proportion of exercises with 4 or more knowledge points in the People's Education Press Edition A.In general,the comprehensive difficulty of the exercises in the People's Education Press Edition A is was greater than that in the Beijing Normal University Edition,and the People's Education Press Edition A focused on research-based exercises for comprehensive application,while the Beijing Normal University Edition focused on transfer-based exercises for consolidation practice.Based on research conclusions,the following suggestions were proposed for the writing and teaching of compulsory textbook exercises in Chinese high school mathematics:(1)Enriching the background of mathematics textbook exercises and moderately expand the open space of the exercises.(2)Balancing the proportion of exercises on the six major mathematics literacies to promote the overall development of students' literacy.(3)Making a reasonable selection of exercises at different levels to enhance the effectiveness of teaching mathematics exercises.