The Effects Of Integrating History Of Mathematics Into Teaching On Attitudes Toward Mathematics Of Junior School Students

To meet the high requirements of personnel training in the new era,China no longer only focuses on the development of individual knowledge and skills but also attaches more and more importance to the cultivation of students’ emotional attitudes and values.Under this trend,developing more positive attitudes toward mathematics is mentioned many times in Chinese Full-time Compulsory Education Mathematics Curriculum Standards.A large number of empirical researches at home and abroad have shown that integrating history of mathematics into teaching can not only help students acquire a deeper understanding of mathematics,but also sustain their interest and excitement in mathematics,and thus promote their attitudes toward mathematics.Most of these researches focus on the effects of HPM on students’ learning outcomes in the cognitive domain,while those investigating the impact on affective domains are scarce.In addition,teachers find that teaching under HPM perspective may have different effects on students with different academic abilities.Therefore,a 3-week experiment including 10 lectures was carried out to investigate the effects of integrating history of mathematics into teaching Grade 8 Students with different academic abilities.Quantitative and qualitative methods were both used in this study.A revised version of Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory Short Form(ATMI-SF)which measures four subscales – enjoyment of mathematics,motivation to do mathematics,self-confidence in mathematics,and perceived value of mathematics was used to measure all the participants’ attitudes before and after the experiment.At the same time,questionnaires were handed out in the middle of the experiment and six students with high,middle,and low academic abilities were interviewed after the experiment.The analysis of the data from the inventories indicated that integrating history of mathematics in teaching had a significant positive effect on students’ attitudes toward mathematics,especially in two domains(motivation and perceived value of mathematics).Positive effects were found on all academic levels but only statistically significant changes for students with high academic ability.Significant positive effects were found on “enjoyment of mathematics” for students with high ability and“perceived value of mathematics” for students with middle academic ability,while for students with low academic ability,no significant changes were found.