Open tasks in Japanese textbooks: The case of geometry for lower secondary school

Abstract

From the early 1970s Japanese mathematics teaching has put particular emphasis on designing and implementing lessons in which students can explore different approaches and ways to solve given problems. This is generally known as the open-ended approach because the tasks tackled by students are ‘open’ to different solution strategies and approaches. The purpose of this paper is to report on the extent to which such an open approach is realised in current mathematics textbooks in Japan. Our focus is geometrical reasoning in lower secondary school, as this is one of the important topics in mathematics. In analysing the topic of angles in polygons, we found that open problems were utilised by Japanese textbook authors as worthy approaches which all teachers could take in everyday lessons on this topic. We further found that while each of the seven textbook series had undergone the same official authorisation process, the textbooks showed different approaches for the same geometry topic. This illustrates the variety of ways in which the open-ended approach can be enacted in the teaching of mathematics.

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ORCID for Keith Jones: orcid.org/0000-0003-3677-8802

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