In order to promote the reform of mathematics teaching at the Open University of China (OUC), improve the quality of talent training, implement the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education, and better integrate ideological and political theories into the mathematics curriculum, on 16 November 2021, the OUC held an online work conference on mathematics teaching.

Vice dean of the OUC Faculty of Education, Zhang Xia, and all the teaching staff of the School of Applied Mathematics attended the on-site conference at the Wukesong Campus. Over 100 people including Associate Professor Yang Jing from Tsinghua University and the heads, course coordinators, and tutors of Mathematics majors at OUC branches attended the conference remotely.

The conference was divided into four sections: lectures on ideological and political topics in mathematics courses, seminars on ideological and political construction in mathematics courses, interpretation of trends in mathematics teaching reforms, and training for thesis defence moderators for mathematics and applied mathematics.

Zhang Xia said that the School of Applied Mathematics is an important part of the Faculty of Education. It undertakes the teaching management work of public mathematics courses across the OUC and has achieved excellent results. In recent years, the development of the mathematics major has encountered some difficulties. It is necessary to persistently strengthen teaching reform, enhance the construction of teaching teams, create “useful and easy-to-learn” learning resources, and take advantage of the rural revitalisation strategy to provide high-quality courses for rural mathematics teachers. She hopes that the OUC’s mathematics teachers will work together to bring the mathematics work of the OUC to a higher level.

The conference invited Yang Jing, associate professor at Tsinghua University, to give a lecture on ideological and political topics in mathematics. Yang Jing is a famous youth teacher in Beijing and won second prize in the Beijing Higher Education Teaching Achievement Award and first prize in the Young Teachers’ Basic Teaching Skills Competition of Beijing Universities. He has been invited to give reports on ideological and political topics at national mathematics forum conferences on several occasions. At this conference, he gave a lecture entitled “Citing, exploring and extending: Thoughts and preliminary exploration of ideology and politics courses in the mathematics curriculum.” He used the Rain Classroom to interact with the participating teachers online, giving them a lively and interesting ideological and political class, sharing his opinions on important issues such as “what are ideological and political courses,” “why should we carry out ideological and political course in mathematics,” and “misconceptions of ideological and political course,” and introduced ‘four levels’ for the specific implementation of ideological and political courses.

The four teachers shortlisted for the finals of the “mathematics curriculum with ideological and political teaching case competition” shared their experience in the ideological and political construction of mathematics curricula. Han Yujuan from the Zhejiang Branch delivered a report entitled “Two-way coordination, multiple integration-exploration and experience of mathematics curricula with ideological and political topics.” Zhang Yongfen from the Shanghai Branch delivered a report entitled "The practice of and thoughts on advanced mathematics curricula with ideological and political topics and the teaching on ideological and political topics.” Li Haixia from the Wuhan Branch delivered a report entitled “Thoughts on higher mathematics curricula with ideological and political construction.” Jiang Nan from the Shanxi Branch delivered a report entitled “Let open education in mathematics curricula flourish with ‘ideology and politics’ topics.” 

The conference explained the recent trends in mathematics teaching reform from four aspects: resource update, examination reform, online teaching team construction, and curricula with ideological and political issues.

A training session for thesis defence moderators was also held at the conference, explaining the content and requirements of the graduation thesis process from four aspects: thesis topic selection, thesis writing and guidance, graduation defence, and degree application and conferment. The training session emphasised that moderators should take due responsibility and strive to improve the quality of dissertations.

By Li Dan, OUC