A Praxeological Comparison of Quadratic Function Tasks in Indonesian and Singaporean Mathematics Textbooks Supporting High-Performing Students
Keywords:
comparative study, high-performing mathematics, mathematics textbook, praxeology, quadratic functionAbstract
This study addresses the gap in comparative praxeological analyses of mathematics textbooks, particularly concerning how curricular structures influence opportunities for high-performing students to develop advanced mathematical thinking. The study examines the techniques, technologies, and task variations in Indonesian and Singaporean textbooks on quadratic functions and identifies potential learning obstacles shaped by curriculum design. Using a qualitative document analysis, data were collected from two widely used national textbook and analyzed through the Anthropological Theory of the Didactic (ATD), focusing on task types, techniques, epistemological ordering, and differentiation for high-performing students. The results reveal that Singapore’s curriculum, supported by Subject-Based Banding, enables textbook to classify tasks into basic, intermediate, and advanced levels, thus providing systematic support for high performing learners and fostering symbolic abstraction. In contrast, the Indonesian textbook presents mixed-level tasks without explicit differentiation, and introduces quadratic equations before quadratic functions, which may generate didactical and epistemological obstacles, especially for students capable of deeper abstraction. The findings imply that curricular decisions profoundly shape textbook design and determine the extent to which high-performing students can access cognitively demanding tasks. This study underscores the need for stronger alignment between assessment, curriculum, and textbook design in Indonesia to better support differentiated learning and promote relational understanding among all learners, including high-performing students.
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