Abstract
This chapter describes two studies that show the impact of China’s new mathematics curriculum on classroom instruction. The first study examined the cognitive features of instructional tasks implemented in primary-level mathematics classrooms adopting the new curriculum in comparison to those using the conventional curriculum. The results indicated that the reform-oriented classrooms used more tasks with high cognitive demand, multiple representations, and multiple solution methods than the non-reform classrooms did. The second study looked into how cognitive demands, multiple representations, and multiple solution methods were related to the nature of student-teacher discourse in the reformed classrooms. It was found that tasks of high cognitive demand were associated with teachers’ high-order questioning which, in turn, was related to students’ highly participatory responses. It was also found that tasks of high cognitive demand as well as teachers’ high-order questions were associated with the teacher’s authority in evaluating students’ answers. In contrast, tasks of multiple solution methods were showed to be related to teachers’ simple questions, and teachers’ simple questions led to more teacher-student joint authority in evaluating students’ responses. Some implications of the findings from the studies are discussed in order to further our understanding of the current instructional practice in Chinese mathematics classrooms and to help formulate strategies to sustain and affect the desirable changes in the classrooms.
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Notes
- 1.
Public lessons refer to the lessons that are conducted by the teachers whom are considered by respective school districts to be exemplary on teaching and are open to teachers in and outside of the schools. Public lessons are a regular part of teacher professional development activity in China. It also helps to efficiently disseminate socially and culturally favored teaching methods. Han and Paine (2010) documented the processes of preparing public lessons by a group of Chinese mathematics teachers.
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Acknowledgement
The authors wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier version of the paper. The two studies described in the article were supported by the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong Special Administration Region, China (CERG-4624/05H; CERG-449807; CUHK Direct Grant-4450199), Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (#6900840), and also the National Center for School Curriculum and Textbook Development, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. However, the findings and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect the positions of the funding agencies.
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Ni, YJ., Li, X., Zhou, D., Li, Q. (2014). Changes in Instructional Tasks and Their Influence on Classroom Discourse in Reformed Mathematics Classrooms of Chinese Primary Schools. In: Li, Y., Silver, E., Li, S. (eds) Transforming Mathematics Instruction. Advances in Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04993-9_13
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