Trends in Cross-National Comparative Mathematics Education

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday I)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: The role of language in teachers' and learners' understanding of early grades math

Proposal

This presentation discusses the need for increased focus on cultural aspects of cross-national comparisons in mathematics education. It is imperative to consider the cultural aspects because recognizing the contexts of learning and teaching mathematics provides a richer and deeper framing of mathematical learning. A significant acceleration in the influence of international organizations aimed at grouping members of the community (e.g. International Commission on Mathematics Instruction) has occurred over the last 20 years (Hodgson, Rogers, Lerman, & Lim-Teo, 2013). This push to globalize education often ignores local cultural and traditional values in the name of academic competition (Masemann, 2007).
The goal for this presentation is to illuminate the pitfalls of excluding the cultural aspects of mathematics from cross-national studies and to highlight the opportunities created when cultural elements are addressed. I argue recognizing culture and context in comparative mathematics education research is one way to fight the loss of locally relevant culture and the dependency on international tests (e.g. PISA, TIMSS). These practices undermine the inherent strengths of comparative education research such as contrasting different systems of education provides opportunities to illuminate factors that would otherwise go unnoticed (Cai, 2002).
I will provide evidence from an exploration of cross-national studies published in five of the top-tier mathematics journals (according to Williams and Leatham (2017)) over the last 10 years (2007-2017): Journal of Research in Mathematics Education, Educational Studies in Mathematics, Journal of Mathematical Behavior, Mathematical Thinking and Learning, and Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. To collect the articles, I did a keyword search for each journal using “cross-cultural comparison,” “international comparison,” and “cross-national comparison”. Initially 39 articles matched the search criteria. After closer examination, 26 articles matched the criteria of empirical international comparisons. A spreadsheet was used to organize and analyze the data extracted from each article including rationale for choosing country, mathematical topic, databases or test used (e.g. PISA), cultural background provided, and countries compared. These facets helped in exploring the contexts of the studies and how cultural aspects were considered by the authors.
This investigation allowed me to examine ways cultural aspects are considered by researchers who publish in top-tier mathematics education journals. Evidence of the lack of cultural aspects includes the justification authors used for the countries included in the studies. The most common reason used for country selection was performance on international tests (n=14) while only a few articles (n=5) considered culture for country comparisons. Other examples of culture considerations included: philosophical or religious underpinnings (n=6); curriculum (n=6); and the educational system of the countries (n=7). I conclude by discussing the benefits of including culture and contexts into comparative studies.

Author

• Hilary Tanck, Clemson University