Lerngelegenheiten mit kaufmännischem Kontext im Mathematikunterricht der allgemeinbildenden Schule: Eine Schulbuch- und Aufgabenanalyse

The acquisition of mathematical competence in general education should, among other things, serve as vocational preparation. Commercial vocations hold a great amount of mathematical demands, involve a great number of trainees, so they should be an important reference for the subject of mathematics. If vocation-related mathematical competences were already acquired at school, they could probably reduce difficulties at the transition from school to work. The question, therefore, arises as to what extent preparatory learning opportunities for the commercial sector (shown by the example of industrial clerks) are part of general mathematics education. In the present study, secondary school textbooks were examined as a reference to the teaching praxis and the mathematical tasks used in class. More precisely, textbook tasks were analyzed with regard to their commercial vocational context. The classification of the contexts of 18 general education mathematics textbooks from 4 series shows that 6% of the tasks have the potential for preparing commercial contents. However, the tasks mostly have a low degree of occupation-relatedness. The study may help to better understand the current design of vocational preparation in general mathematics education.