Book review: mathematics classrooms in twelve countries

Abstract

This book promises much. It aims to give insights into the classrooms of 12 nations in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa and North America. After two introductory chapters, there are 19 chapters presenting a range of perspectives on classrooms in each nation. This is supplemented by an appendix giving 12 overviews on approaches to education and mathematics in those nations. It is ambitious and goes beyond work done by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Assessment, by looking at sequences of lessons in eighth-grade mathematics. The claim is to offer “deeply structured insights into the practices of mathematics classrooms from an insider’s perspective”. This is the first book published as part of the Learners’ Perspective Study (LPS) with more studies, and publications, planned. The LPS research design plans to offer perspectives on learning from the teacher, from the whole class and from focus students. It requires sequences of at least ten lessons using video cameras, supplemented by the reconstructive accounts of classroom participants in postlesson video-stimulated interviews. The design also calls for test and questionnaire data and copies of student written material. In each country, the data generation is intended to focus on three teachers, identified by the local mathematics education community as competent and situated in demographically different communities within one major city. It is not clear how well this leads to a view on the whole country, an issue recognised by the editors. The book is edited by three international authors, from Australia, Germany and Japan. The editors offer a valuable background to the LPS initially, but there are no strong conclusions reached, partly because this is a work in progress with further volumes Educ Stud Math (2009) 71:85–93 DOI 10.1007/s10649-009-9182-4