Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2014 number 5

This article analyses the level of the school mathematics study and the factors of the quality decrease. Due to the shift of the value reference points in the society, the motivation to study mathematics in general educational institutions has dramatically dropped. Teachers and psychologists, for example, D.I. Feldshtein, are concerned about children’s cognitive abilities decrease and the reduction of the working memory volume. At the transition period from the elementary school to the basic school, a tendency is revealed of computing skills decrease because of the poor knowledge of the multiplication table and even the addition table within the limits of twenty. The clipping thinking of schoolchildren does not enable the formation of the subject knowledge system. To solve the problem of reaching the level of school mathematical education, which corresponds to the requirements of the state educational standards and the Concept of development of mathematical education in the Russian Federation, a mathematics teaching model is essential, and it is to be constructed on the principle of the strengths synthesis of the existing teaching models. The author offers a systemic-variable model of teaching mathematics (SVMTM), ten conceptual propositions of which are developed on the basis of the method of variation of the word problems in mathematics. Three propositions, encouraging motivation to study mathematics and the formation of conscious and firm knowledge of schoolchildren, have been developed: - designing of the teaching material for each theme (section) is organized through the construction of interdependent problems (exercises) chains with the use of the word problems variation techniques which enables to form correct generalizations of the teaching material, to prevent typical errors of pupils, and to liquidate gaps in the pupils’ knowledge; - the motivational task represents a complex problem which is a system-forming task for the entire theme. In the process of solving the offered task the attention of the pupils is focused on the volume of knowledge which is necessary for the successful solution of the offered problem, which allows forming a tendency (need)of pupils for critical judgment of their knowledge and their own activity; - in course of the systemic-reformative activity under the direction of the teacher, the pupils will master the experience of «closing» the connections between the motivational task, the educational tasks of the subject material mastering and the solution of a research task (a task with the practical content).