| dc.description.abstract | This study aims to investigate whether it is possible to classify Elective Mathematics, which are offered in the third grade of Taiwanese senior high school education courses into two categories for students of the First Group. The main criteria used for dividing the course into two will have to depend on the professional goals or skills requested by different colleges or departments in university education accordingly.
The subjects for the present study are 495 first-graded students from five Taiwanese senior high schools, and 270 freshmen from the Department of Business Administration in Taiwan. They were asked to fill out questionnaires, based on which were explained and summarized in this research to investigate the needs of the First Group students for Mathematics. In addition, the researcher also examined the diversification of demand for the First Group students regarding to the statistics reports made on the college entrance examination of year 1984 and 2012.
It is observed in this study that the first-grade students in senior high consider “Natural Sciences” as the most decisive subject in their decision of which class group they would enroll in, which is secondly followed by “Mathematics”, and lastly, “Social Sciences”.
As for the result of the research, this study demonstrates that the ratio for the First Group students who major in Business Administration in 1984 is higher than that in 2012. Besides, students of the First Group can be further divided into two subclasses for Mathematics, according to different learning needs for the subject. Finally, this study shows that most of the students from the Department of Business Administration find difficulties in learning Caculus in their freshman year, since they have never learned Elective Mathematics (II) in senior high.
Finally, the researcher offers some suggestions to the high school Mathematics curriculum, designed for students of the First Group, based on the important findings of the research, and hopes these suggestions will be useful for senior high students of the First Group in the future. | en_US |