Chapter 12: A Study of the Writing Features of Primary School Mathematics Textbooks

Textbooks are the materialized carriers of curriculum. As an important media for teaching and learning, they play an irreplaceable role in classroom instruction. They do not only provide an authoritative version of didactics in a particular knowledge domain, but also present each generation of students an official approved authoritative version of human knowledge and culture (Monica, 2006). The writing quality of the textbooks, to a large extent, determines the quality of teaching. In recent years, textbook studies, particularly those on textbook writing, have received more and more attentions in mathematics education research. The first large-scale study focusing on textbooks is known as the TIMSS study, which involved thousands of textbooks from approximate 50 countries (Schmidt et al., 1997). During the 10th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-10) held in Denmark in 2014, textbook was proposed as the theme of one discussion group for the first time in the history of ICME. In addition, there have been many overseas scholars probing into the representation and task design of primary school mathematics contents (e.g., fraction) in their mathematics textbook studies. The domestic studies on primary school mathematics textbooks mainly focused on the contents, structure, representation, usage, mathematical culture, history, comparison as well as writing features, etc. Nevertheless, the existing studies, both domestic and overseas, on the writing features of primary school textbooks remain far from adequate, hardly able to satisfy the needs of the development of primary school mathematics textbooks. Therefore, this paper intends to make a relevant investigation in order to provide appropriate references to the development and characteristic improvement of primary school mathematics textbooks in China.