U.S. and Chinese Teachers' Constructing, Knowing, and Evaluating Representations to Teach Mathematics

Abstract

This study examined U.S. and Chinese teachers' constructing, knowing, and evaluating representations to teach mathematics. All Chinese lesson plans are very similar, because they are all based on the Chinese national unified curriculum in mathematics. However, the U.S. lesson plans are extremely varied, even for those teachers from the same school. The Chinese teachers' lessons are very detailed; the U.S. teachers' lesson plans have exclusively adopted the "outline and worksheet" format. In the Chinese lesson plans, concrete representations are used exclusively to mediate students' understanding of the concept of average. In U.S. lessons, concrete representations are not only used to model the averaging processes to foster students' understanding of the concept, but they are also used to generate data. The U.S. teachers are much more likely than the Chinese teachers to predict drawing and guess-and-check strategies. For some problems, the Chinese teachers are much more likely than are the U.S. teachers to predict algebraic approaches. For the responses using conventional strategies, both the U.S. and Chinese teachers gave them high and almost identical scores. If a response involved a drawing or an estimate of an answer, the Chinese teachers usually gave a relatively lower score, even though the strategy is appropriate for the correct answer, because it is less generalizable. This study contributed to our understanding of the cross-national differences between U.S. and Chinese students' mathematical thinking. It also contributed to our understanding about teachers' beliefs from a cross-cultural perspective.