A Fundamental Research on the Teaching and Learning Aiming to Foster Mathematical Literacy : On the Tasks and the Approaches

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the tasks to realize teaching and learning aiming to foster mathematical literacy and approaches to solve those. To achieve, firstly it was described that today' mathematical literacy embraces both of application-oriented and structure-oriented, and it is emphasized application-oriented mathematical methods. Then teaching and learning incorporating structure-oriented into application-oriented mathematical methods was thought as teaching and learning aiming to foster today's mathematical literacy. But, the connection of application-oriented and structure-oriented became the task to realize this teaching and learning because a purpose of both of them is different. To solve the task, the author referred to Lesh' researches which focus on teaching and learning (what is called Model-Eliciting activity) that creates mathematical structures during iterative cycles of mathematical modeling. According to this activity, it was thought that the above-mentioned task on the connection will be able to be solved by "developing models". However it was also thought that it is difficult to realize teaching and learning by only this view. The reason is that teaching and learning in mathematics education should be thought from view to both of mathematics and students but this is only view to mathematics. And it is not necessarily said that Lesh' researches enough clearly describe this activity from view to students. Thus, it was pointed as teaching and learning aiming to foster today's mathematical literacy that the argument about students in developing models is not nearly enough. And an approach to solve this is to relate research areas with each other from view of developing models, which will be the foundation of arguments about students in developing models.