Teacher agency for integrating history into teaching mathematics in a performance-driven context: a case study of a begi
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Teacher agency for integrating history into teaching mathematics in a performance-driven context: a case study of a beginning teacher in China Xiaoli Lu 1 & Frederick Koon Shing Leung 2
& Na Li
3
Accepted: 22 October 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
The importance of integrating history into mathematics education is widely recognised in the literature and advocated in curricula worldwide, including in China. However, under the influence of the long-standing centrally designed curricula, teachers in China are accustomed to content- and teacher-centred examination-driven teaching practices. Adopting a life story approach, this paper reports the case of a mathematics teacher who integrated history into her mathematics teaching during the initial two years of her teaching in a Shanghai high school. The agentic perspective adopted in the study allows us to focus on how the teacher’s agency was enacted and achieved when engaging in teaching practices. Our findings reveal the roles played by personal qualities, prior experiences, and the structure and culture of schooling in the teacher’s agency in integrating history into teaching under a dominant performance-driven context. Implications of the results for integrating history into teaching in restricted contexts are then discussed. Keywords Teacher agency . Context of tension . Integrating history into teaching mathematics . Chinese mathematics education . Case study
* Frederick Koon Shing Leung [email protected] Xiaoli Lu [email protected]; [email protected] Na Li [email protected]
1
School of Mathematical Sciences, Shanghai Key Laboratory of PMMP, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Road, Minhang District, 200241 Shanghai, China
2
The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China
3
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Central China Normal University, 152 Luoyu Road, Hubei, Wuhan, China
Lu X. et al.
1 Introduction Inspiring prospective teachers (Nolan, 2012) and in-service teachers to adopt student-focused pedagogies is challenging and complex for mathematics teacher educators, particularly in China where tensions in teacher-centred, content-focused, and examination-oriented practices of mathematics teaching are predominant (Leung, 2001). Mathematics teaching and learning in China has attracted researchers’ attention worldwide owing to Chinese students’ outstanding performances in international assessments (e.g., the latest PISA 2018, OECD, 2019) compared with their Western counterparts. Some studies have attributed this to the long-standing emphasis in China’s mathematics curriculum on acquiring basic mathematical knowledge and grasping basic mathematical skills (the “two basics”) (Zhang, Li, & Tang, 2004) and the achievement/goal-oriented approach to mathematics learning (Guo & Leung, 2020). However, comparative studies have also indicated that this superiority does not extend to solving non-routine mathematical problems (e.g., Cai & Lester, 2005), probably owing to the overemphasis on mathematical content. More
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