Teaching and Learning Cross-Country Mathematics

Abstract

In many countries, teachers are expected to work from a national syllabus or examination framework to develop their own courses. They often have little to guide them other than their own professional preparation plus a set of standard textbooks. Mathematics textbooks often are largely used as sources of problems rather than as determiners of lesson structure. In the United States, in contrast, mathematics teachers use not only detailed teachers’ versions of textbooks to guide their work but also elaborate packages of what are called “ancillary materials”—worksheets, software, sample tests, videotapes, calculator booklets, laboratory materials—that help lift the burden of curriculum innovation from the teachers’ shoulders. That burden has been largely assumed in the United States by commercial textbook publishers, who lavish resources on the preparation of curriculum packages, and by curriculum development projects funded by the national government or charitable foundations. Although collegiate mathematics teachers usually feel quite free to develop their own courses and the materials for them, precollege teachers do so only in rare cases. The case study reported in this volume concentrates on one of those exceptional cases in which a group of high school teachers initiated curriculum reform on their own, albeit eventually with substantial assistance.