A Study of Current Work in Curriculum Development for School Mathematics in Korea towards the 21st Century

The curriculum differentiation is supposed to maximize individual strength and possibilities of the students, and to maximize educational efficiency by differentiating the instructions according to students' abilities, aptitudes, needs and interests. The Ministry of Education has suggested a stepwise model for school mathematics. This model is named "Stepwise Curriculum Differentiation"(段階別 敎育課程 差別化). In this paper, we would like to make a specific proposal for the 7th curriculum. Our proposal reflects fully the guidelines of the Ministry of Education. It is also based on the national curriculum history up to the present time. It could be used as a reference for the continuing work of curriculum reformation. We suggest dividing the contents of mathematics for 1-10th graders into about 15 steps, to use the step-based textbooks instead of the grade-based ones, and to prepare evaluation standards for each step. We also suggest that the classes for grades 11-12 be organized according to their optional courses and/or their steps.