An Experimental Study On Training High School Students’ Mathematical Modeling Literacy Under STEM Education Concept

Mathematical modeling activities are the basis for developing students’ mathematical modeling literacy,and are highly comprehensive,practical,and interdisciplinary in nature;therefore,it is worthwhile to think about how to conduct efficient mathematical modeling activity classes.Does the STEM education concept,which is characterized by interdisciplinary,interesting,experiential,and contextualized nature,provide perspectives and methods for students’ mathematical modeling literacy development? To this end,this paper conducts an experimental study of a mathematical modeling activity class based on the STEM education concept in order to improve students’ mathematical modeling literacy from an interdisciplinary perspective and in the process of problem solving.Using literature,experimental,questionnaire and interview methods,this paper explores the effect of the STEM education concept on the development of mathematical modeling literacy of high school students according to the following three steps.Firstly,we proposed the teaching design principles of integrating STEM education concept into high school mathematical modeling class based on the principles of learning theory and curriculum construction,and designed two teaching cases: "The best time to drink tea" and "Parking distance problem" based on the "6E" teaching model.Secondly,two parallel classes of Kunming A High School were selected through a pre-test to conduct an experimental study on these two cases.Finally,a questionnaire was developed for pre-testing and post-testing from three dimensions: mathematical modeling literacy,STEM literacy and mathematical thinking character,in order to test the effect of the experiment.The experimental results showed that there was no statistically significant difference between the pre-test scores of the experimental class and the control class in the three dimensions,but the post-test scores of the experimental class were significantly higher than those of the control class(the mean value of the test questions,the mean value of the mathematical modeling literacy scores,and the mean value of the total questionnaire scores were 79.06,67.24,and 217.84 in the experimental class,while the mean value of the test questions and the mean value of the mathematical modeling literacy scores were 73.47 and 60.69 in the control class).(mean score of 60.69,mean score of 181.90 total questionnaire score,p<0.05).Overall,(1)integrating STEM education concepts into high school mathematical modeling is conducive to cultivating mathematical modeling literacy in high school students;(2)it is conducive to stimulating students’ enthusiasm and initiative in learning and making them willing to participate in classroom activities;and(3)it is conducive to improving students’ STEM literacy and mathematical thinking character and promoting the comprehensive use of interdisciplinary knowledge.