Exploring Pathways for the Integration of Aesthetic Education into the University Course Research on Problem Solving in Primary School Mathematics

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the education reform oriented toward the integrated development of moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic, and labor education, aesthetic education, as a crucial dimension for enhancing students' core competencies, is moving from the periphery toward the center. The Primary Education (Mathematics) program aims to cultivate future teachers with solid subject knowledge and education and teaching competence, and its curriculum design directly determines the quality of the teaching workforce in basic education. However, core courses such as Research on Problem Solving in Primary School Mathematics generally exhibit the problems of prioritizing skills over competencies, logic over aesthetics, and theory over practice, which leads to pre-service teachers' insufficient perception of mathematical beauty and their difficulty in achieving interdisciplinary integration and aesthetic education in future primary school mathematics classrooms. Taking undergraduate pre-service teachers majoring in Primary Education (Mathematics) at a Chinese university who have completed or are currently taking the course Research on Problem Solving in Primary School Mathematics as the main research subjects, this study employs literature review, questionnaire surveys, and semi-structured interviews to conduct an in-depth analysis of the intrinsic logic and practical dilemmas of integrating aesthetic education into the curriculum of the Primary Education (Mathematics) program. The findings reveal that the current course mainly faces challenges including the hollowing-out of aesthetic education goals, superficial content mining, rigid teaching methods, a monolithic assessment system, and shortcomings in teachers' aesthetic literacy. Accordingly, this paper proposes a five-in-one implementation pathway comprising reconstruction of three-dimensional goals, deep content mining, empowerment through diverse teaching, comprehensive assessment orientation, and teaching team building. Combined with typical problem-solving teaching cases in primary school mathematics, concrete teaching designs embodying the beauty of symmetry, logic, method, and thought are developed. The results show that systematic integration of aesthetic education can effectively reshape pre-service teachers' mathematical cognitive structures, enhance the aesthetic connotations and educational value of their instructional designs, and contribute to the overall improvement of talent cultivation quality in the Primary Education (Mathematics) program.