engleski

What types of knowledge do mathematics textbooks promote?

This paper reports a study on the type of mathematical tasks and their overall representation in mathematics textbooks. The aim of the study was to investigate the ratio of tasks according to the main classification on procedural and conceptual tasks according to the type of knowledge one accessed to obtain a solution. The study provides further insight into the classification of each type of tasks by categories established by the researcher according to Rittle – Johnson and Schneider (2015) categorization. The study was conducted on two out of three mathematics textbooks approved by the Ministry of Science and Education of Republic of Croatia and covered two chapters from two different mathematics domains. The findings showed that procedural tasks were vastly present in investigated textbooks, unlike conceptual tasks. Based on these findings we argue for an increase of conceptual tasks in mathematics textbooks. Our argument stems from previous studies which advocate a balance of procedural and conceptual knowledge in teaching and learning mathematics. Further, we find the results disappointing since numerous studies show that textbooks play one of the main and almost central role in teachers’ lesson preparation, as well as in the selection of tasks used during teaching phase and practicing phase of the lesson.

procedural tasks ; conceptual tasks ; textbooks ; teaching mathematics ; textbooks’ analysis

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