The Extent of Correspondence between the Content of the 9th Grade Math Textbook and the Real World Issues

Education has always been one of the main concerns of human societies, but in different periods and different communities educational goals have varied. Nowadays, and especially here in Iran, the main goal of education is to prepare children for real life and its problem. More specifically, the goal in mathematics education is help students with solving real life problems using their acquired math knowledge. Such an ability is called math literacy in many countries and every three years is assessed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development within the PISA study. A comparison between the problems used in this study and those presented in the Iranian 9th grade mathematics textbook was undertaken in order to determine the extent of their correspondence. To do the comparison an instrument was developed in order to categorize the problems in the two sources. The validity of the instrument was confirmed by experienced math teachers and other experts. To limit the study, only the problems in geometry were categorized. Results show that although the textbook problems reflect real world problems, the fact that the solutions are given therein deprives students from practicing problem solving on her/his own. These findings can help textbook authors with the task of reviewing and editing.