Chinese middle school mathematics teachers’ practices and perspectives viewed through a western lens

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate Chinese middle school mathematics teachers’ practices and perspectives on knowing and learning that may underlie their observed practices. In particular, this study addressed the following research questions: (a) What pedagogical activities and strategies can be identified in Chinese middle school mathematics teachers’ practices? (b) What teacher perspectives of mathematics knowing and learning may underlie these teachers’ practices? To address these questions, the researcher, a native Chinese who moved to Australia and became an Australian citizen, used a constructivist (western) conceptual framework as a lens. This framework combined two lines of previous work, Ernest’s (1989b) characterisation of mathematics teaching and Simon and Tzur et al.’s (Heinz et al., 2000b; Simon et al., 2000; Tzur et al., 2001) distinction of perspectives that seem to underlie reform-oriented teaching practices. Eleven year-7 middle school mathematics teachers from two different schools located in a Southeast province in Mainland China volunteered to participate in this study. For each of these 11 teachers, a set of data was collected, consisting of two video recorded classroom observations (consecutive lessons) interspersed with three video recorded interviews with the teacher about those observed lessons (before, between, and after each classroom observations). Transcripts of the interviews and classroom observations were translated into English. Six teachers were then selected as case studies and their practices and perspectives were analysed using the constant comparison method proposed by Glaser and Strauss (1967) as part of the Grounded Theory methodology. Findings of this study indicate that, typically, the participating Chinese teachers used a five-component cyclic teaching practice—Reviewing, Bridging, Variation, Summarising, and Reflection/Planning. The first four components constituted their implemented lesson structure. Data are presented to depict the nature of these first four components along with the participating teachers’ rationale for using each component the way they did. The significance of these findings is discussed in terms of a perspective about knowing and learning that seem to underlie the participating teachers’ five-component practice. This perspective appears to differ from perspectives that were identified previously. Coupled with the four-component lesson structure this perspective is discussed in terms of how it may inform mathematics teachers’ development of effective pedagogical practices, as well as future research and theory development.