This thesis is a comparative analysis of five different Korean seventh grade methmatics text-books which have been revised under the Fifth Curriculum Guidelines, and Japanese and American seventh grade Mathematical books.
The comparative analysis foc...
This thesis is a comparative analysis of five different Korean seventh grade methmatics text-books which have been revised under the Fifth Curriculum Guidelines, and Japanese and American seventh grade Mathematical books.
The comparative analysis focuses on problem solving, especially with respect to problem types. The problem types were categonized into preparatory, computing, word and puzzle problems, so as to show how much the emphasis of the Curriculum Guidelines were effectively reflected in the five Korean textbooks.
The author found that the contents, arrangements and the manner in which each chapters were presented were almost identical in Korean and Japanese textbooks. The American textbooks focuses on basic numerical operations and each chapter includes a section devoted to computers and problem solving strategies.
The textbooks of all three countries contained computing problems out of the four types described above, the most. Also, with respect to word problems, all of them contained more routine than non-routine problems. Only Korean and American textbooks contained puzzle problems.
Considering the evidence shown above, it can be concluded that there are little difference in the types it problems the textbooks of different countries contain. However, in American textbooks, problem solving processes and strategies enhancing problem solving abilities, were directly reflected in the curriculum where Japanese textbooks proved to be inadequate in this respect. Likewise, although the Korean Fifth Curriculum Guidelines also emphasizes enhancing problem solving alilities, this was not sufficiently reflected in the revised textbooks.