Characteristics of Chinese Elementary Mathematics Lessons Under Pressure of Teaching Reform: Analysis of Videotaped Mathematics Lessons

• In Event: Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: Studies of Curriculum and Instruction in Mathematics Education

Abstract

This study examines characteristics of Chinese elementary mathematics lessons under the curriculum reform pressure. Guided with the theories of mathematics knowledge for teaching and culturally scripted mathematics teaching, it analyzed six lessons from different teachers in three Chinese elementary schools. It found that the reformed curriculum clearly shaped the teachers' decisions of instructional objectives, choices and representations of mathematics concepts, and pedagogical moves to weave various concepts with each other. Chinese collective cultural value shape their lessons in treating mathematics as a coherent system with some concepts built on the others and using the public verification to check mathematics ideas presented. It concludes that teaching changes under the pressures of power curriculum is a gradual and infiltrative process.

Author

• Jian Wang, Texas Tech University