Opportunities to Learn: Inverse Relations in U.S. and Chinese Textbooks

This study, focusing on inverse relations, examines how representative U.S. and Chinese elementary textbooks may provide opportunities to learn fundamental mathematical ideas. Findings from this study indicate that both of the U.S. textbook series (grades K-6) in comparison to the Chinese textbook s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMathematical thinking and learning Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 45 - 68
Main Author Ding, Meixia
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Philadelphia Routledge 02.01.2016
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
China
Coding
Comparative Analysis
Cross Cultural Studies
Educational Opportunities
Elementary Education
Elementary School Mathematics
Elementary Schools
Foreign Countries
Grade 1
Mathematical Concepts
Mathematics Education
Plasma
Teaching Methods
Textbook Content
Textbook Evaluation
Textbooks
United States
United States
China
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Summary:This study, focusing on inverse relations, examines how representative U.S. and Chinese elementary textbooks may provide opportunities to learn fundamental mathematical ideas. Findings from this study indicate that both of the U.S. textbook series (grades K-6) in comparison to the Chinese textbook samples (grades 1-6), presented more instances of inverse relations, while also containing more unique types of problems; yet, the Chinese textbooks provided more opportunities supporting meaningful and explicit learning. In particular, before presenting corresponding practice problems, Chinese textbooks contextualized worked examples of inverse relations in real-world situations to aid in sense making of computational or checking procedures. The Chinese worked examples also differed in representation uses especially through concreteness fading. Finally, the Chinese textbooks spaced learning over time, systematically stressing structural relations including the inverse quantities relationships. These findings shed light on ways to support students' meaningful and explicit learning of fundamental mathematical ideas in elementary school.
ISSN:1098-6065
1532-7833
DOI:10.1080/10986065.2016.1107819