Abstract
Discourse analysis of the most popular textbooks of high school mathematics was conducted from three viewpoints: contents, quizzes and description. (1) Content analysis that investigated how the contents were arranged in the textbooks showed that many contents which should belong to the same topic were separated and published in different volumes. Textbook failed to present contents systematically and to show the goal of mathematical clearly for learners. (2) Quiz analysis pointed out that most of the quizzes in the textbooks just forced learners to follow the solution that was shown in the preceding model answers. Learners had to follow sample solution methods and answers mechanically, but they were not encouraged to think by themselves or explore their own original solutions. (3) Description analysis examined the words and phrases that were unique to current mathematics textbooks by comparing them with other textbooks which were too challenging to be widely adopted. It was found that current textbooks extremely lacked both active description that encouraged learners to think by themselves and dynamic description that illustrated the sequence and development of mathematical thinking.
These results suggest that current textbooks do not attract learners to mathematics but distract and exclude them. Math-phobia of many students is attributed to learner's natural adaptation to current textbooks, which was discussed in terms of Legitimate Peripheral Participation Theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Students who are suited to current textbooks might have no interests in mathematics, but they just give attentions to efficient and patterned solutions for examination.
Beyond criticism, we designed a chapter that encourages learners to participate in mathematics learning. The chapter includes contents which are clear and comprehensive, quizzes which allow learners to think in a flexible way, and descriptions which are characterized by dynamic and straight voices.
