A Case Study: The Curriculum Development And Implementation Of Mathematics Elective Courses In Chinese Junior High Schools

There are many special curricular natures to talk about when it comes to elective courses.One of the most important natures is that elective courses are optionally chosen with the consideration of interests and concerning of students,which has much less influence on compulsory courses.Elective courses play a significant role in China's higher education,as an effective method to cultivate comprehensive quality and ability of students.In the past decades,elective courses have gradually entered the basic education and become a hot issue in the reformation and exploration in both primary and secondary education.The research questions of this paper are as follows:(1)What do mathematics teachers and students in junior high schools think of mathematics elective courses,and what attitude do they hold towards setting up elective courses?(2)How should the mathematics elective course be designed in junior middle schools?(3)How should the mathematics elective course be lunched and promoted in junior middle schools?Perspectives from both teachers and students among the objectives and content of mathematics elective courses in this paper have been collected by questionnaires and interview.Besides,with the help of existing document data,the current situation,the basic syllabus design principles and implementation of elective courses in junior high schools at home and abroad have been thoroughly learned.The teaching case study method is chosen as the main research approach of this paper to explore problems that should be paid attention to during the implementation of mathematics elective courses.This research shows that most teachers and students positively affirm the significance of mathematics elective courses,and believe that elective courses can broaden their horizons and increase their mathematical knowledge.Most students have a clear intention to participate in mathematics elective courses and some of them hope that the selection of content can be closely combined with the in-class mathematics knowledge,hoping to improve their mathematics scores through the courses.Teachers pay more attention to the influence on students' learning interest and thinking ability.Compared with elective courses of junior high schools in China,the elective courses in some developed countries gain more popularity,and the curriculum content and form are more diversified.There are three main reasons for this unsatisfactory situation in China.Firstly,guidance and requirements of programmatic documents are in deficiency.Secondly,it is difficult for some schools to undertake the task of curriculum development,and the course selection system is unreasonable.Thirdly,teachers are lack of professional competence.At the end of this research,three basic principles — interest and value,feasibility and pertinence,flexibility and diversity,have been summaries from three mathematics elective courses given by the author who thoroughly participated in the course design,implementation,recording and analysis.Elective courses provide a broad platform for educators to do more researches on subject courses.Although there are many problems about the course design and implementation,most teachers insist that they have gained a lot by participating in the course development.Not only do they have a new understanding of the course objectives,content and evaluation methods of mathematics curriculum,but they realise that there are many shortcomings that are waiting for being solved in their teaching work.