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While the importance of knowledge for effective instruction has long been acknowledged, and the concept and structure of mathematics knowledge for teaching are far from being new, the process of such knowledge acquisition and improvement remains underexplored empirically and theoretically. The difficulty can well associate with the fact that different education systems embody different values for what mathematics teachers need to learn and how they can be assisted to develop their knowledge. To improve this situation with needed consideration about a system context and policies, How Chinese Acquire and Improve Mathematics Knowledge for Teaching takes a unique approach to present new research that views knowledge acquisition and improvement as part of teachers’ life-long professional learning process in China. The book includes such chapters that can help readers to make possible connections of teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching in China with educational policies and program structures for mathematics teacher education in that system context.

How Chinese Acquire and Improve Mathematics Knowledge for Teaching brings invaluable inspirations and insights to mathematics educators and teacher educators who wish to help teachers improve their knowledge, and to researchers who study this important topic beyond a static knowledge conception.

Efforts to improve mathematics teaching and learning globally have led to the ever-increasing interest in searching for alternative and effective instructional approaches from others. Students from East Asia, such as China and Japan, have consistently outperformed their counterparts in the West. Yet, Bianshi Teaching (teaching with variation) practice, which has been commonly used in practice in China, has been hardly shared in the mathematics education community internationally. This book is devoted to theorizing the Chinese mathematical teaching practice, Bianshi teaching, that has demonstrated its effectiveness over half a century; examining its systematic use in classroom instruction, textbooks, and teacher professional development in China; and showcasing of the adaptation of the variation pedagogy in selected education systems including Israel, Japan, Sweden and the US. This book has made significant contributions to not only developing the theories on teaching and learning mathematics through variation, but also providing pathways to putting the variation theory into action in an international context.