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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

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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.

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Notes

  1. The excerpts of students’ voice provided by Doris from her diary.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Professor Jianpan Wang, the director of Shanghai Research Base for School Mathematics Education, and the chair of ICME-14, for his support on the development of the manuscript. Our gratitude also goes to the beginning mathematics teacher Doris who participated in the study and selflessly shared her story as the data of the study.

Funding

The manuscript is supported in part by the grant from Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (No. 18dz2271000), and by self-determined research funds of CCNU from the college’s basic research and operation of Ministry of Education (23020205170464). The manuscript arises out of the PhD research conducted by the first author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematical Sciences, Shanghai Key Laboratory of PMMP, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Road, Minhang District, 200241, Shanghai, China

    Xiaoli Lu

  2. The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China

    Frederick Koon Shing Leung

  3. School of Mathematics and Statistics, Central China Normal University, 152 Luoyu Road, Hubei, Wuhan, China

    Na Li

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  1. Xiaoli Lu
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  2. Frederick Koon Shing Leung
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Correspondence to Frederick Koon Shing Leung.

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Lu, X., Leung, F.K.S. & Li, N. Teacher agency for integrating history into teaching mathematics in a performance-driven context: a case study of a beginning teacher in China. Educ Stud Math 106, 25–44 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-020-10006-z

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