Abstract
Overseas, international Mathematical Modeling Challenge Programs for secondary school students are often held. In contrast, as of 2015, no such programs have been conducted at the national level in Japan. While mathematical activity is strongly emphasized in government course curriculum guidelines and the contents of task-based learning is included in textbooks, the term “mathematical modeling” is not well known in Japan. In Kyoto, a regional Mathematical Modeling Challenge Program has been carried out consecutively for three years and was held for the fourth time in 2015. This paper reports on the summary of the program conducted for junior high school students. Although it was the first opportunity for many of the participants to encounter mathematical modeling, they worked in teams on problem solving using models within an assigned period of time. In general, we received a very favorable impression from the participants for this program, but some problems such as evaluation criteria need to be improved for the future.
