Abstract
When a curriculum change is being an issue, the editorships and the promotive directions reflect to supplement the social requests. However it is often criticized that such changes in the textbook itself are not satisfactory enough as to coherent to the editoships. And we set the following research questions; (1) One of the most important changes in the new 7th curriculum is to encourage the students' activities. We checked if it is well suited in the new textbooks. (2) Often textbook itself is not important In class, while instructor or students want something else other than the one suggested in the textbook. We asked 187 teachers how they use the textbooks in class. To answer (1), we checked up the introductory - activity - contents with 7 categories, which are ${\circled1}$ of real life sources ${\circled2}$ in use of concrete manipulative ${\circled3}$ in use of computers or calculators ${\circled4}$ in use of historical resources ${\circled5}$ stimulating to recall a relevant previous knowledges ${\circled6}$ of coherence between the activity and the exploratory contexts. ${\circled2}$ were increased, rewarding to the decrease of ${\circled5}$, in the new textbooks, while changes in ${\circled3}$ and ${\circled4}$ were not enough to talk about increments. Especially slight decrease in ${\circled6}$ were detected and it seemed to attribute to the unmatchable use of ${\circled1}$ and ${\circled2}$ with the explanation of mathematical subjects, which also implies how difficult to match ${\circled1}$ and ${\circled2}$ with ${\circled6}$. Analyzing the reponses of (2), about 70% of the teachers used the introductory activities in the textbook, which led better attention of sudents, while 30% of teachers do not use it because they felt that its inroductory activities had not been adequate for their purposes. Teachers counted inadequacy reasons for not being helpful in class, lack of time or lack of support of students, etc. Those teachers use introductory activities invented of their own for classes. As some results of the study, we suggest firstly that authors of textbooks have to get more informations to provide ways to entcourage students' interest in mathematics classes. The ways must be practical and brain storming as well as More use of computers and calculators and mathematical history are expected. Secondly, we are emphasizing the feedbacks between the textbook authors and the users(teachers and students) through internet. Which, we anticipate, will get better communications between them and be a good foundations of continuous modifications of textbooks.
