Teachers’ Perception of the Suitability of Chinese School Year 6 Mathematics Textbook

Abstract

Textbooks are one of the primary referencing sources in teaching mathematics. Mathematics teachers refer to textbooks to plan their daily teaching. However, the need for a protocol to evaluate the quality of textbooks has raised a question on the suitability of textbooks currently used in schools. Hence, this research aimed to investigate the suitability of the Year 6 mathematics textbook from mathematics teachers’ perspectives. The investigation circles the correlation between six aspects: curriculum, discipline, pedagogy, technology, context, and presentation. Through a random sampling strategy, 100 Sarawakian Chinese primary school mathematics teachers responded to the survey form distributed through WhatsApp within a week. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) analyzed quantitative data descriptively and analytically. The analysis found that the Year 6 mathematics textbook is highly suitable (min = 3.34). Pearson Correlation analysis also identified moderate positive relationships between curriculum (r = 0.408), pedagogy (r = 0.405), and technology (r = 0.459) aspects. Meanwhile, discipline has weak positive relationships with context (r = 0.378) and presentation (r = 0.335) aspects. Hence, improve the survey item and include qualitative data to enhance the research quality for the suitability evaluation of mathematics textbooks.