2018 Volume 42 Issue 4 Pages 350-365
Promoting teacher training for the teaching of mathematical modelling is an urgent issue in Japanese mathematics education. This study analysed primary school teachers’ initial changes, and extending perspectives on math-textbook problems from the viewpoints of the real world and the mathematical world as essential elements of mathematical modelling. Teacher training was then carried out with 21 teachers in a public primary school for two days. In the teacher training, the teachers conducted a study of, or research on, teaching materials (i.e. kyozaikenkyu) and considered the features and aims of textbook problems using a diagram related to the modelling process diagram. The findings indicated teachers’ diversity of perspectives on analysing math-textbook problems, teachers’ difficulties in specifying assumptions behind problems, changes in teachers’ perspectives for analysing problems, and elicitation of various perspectives surrounding modelling teaching, including making sense of the modelling process. The extensibilities of primary school teachers’ competencies for analysing and developing modelling problems and the roles of the modelling process diagram in conducting kyozaikenkyu were discussed for teacher training on modelling teaching in Japan.
