Mathematics learning in Chinese contexts

In this survey paper we focus on mathematics learning in Chinese contexts, as a way to contribute to broader discussions about mathematical learning. We first review the features of Chinese students’ mathematical learning depicted in the literature, followed by a review of student mathematical learning in recent Chinese research journals. This leads to an introduction of the papers on Chinese students’ learning in this issue. For Chinese students’ learning contexts, we discuss four aspects, namely, classroom instruction, teachers’ professional learning, curriculum materials, and learning outside of school. For each context, we review the literature findings on the identified features, introduce emerged practices and most recent policies under the reformed era, and discuss the relevant papers in this special issue. Whenever possible, we connect findings on Chinese students’ learning with the associated contexts and relate these findings in the Chinese contexts to findings in the broader world context. We conclude this survey paper with possible lessons learned from Chinese students’ learning features and from the varied Chinese contexts. In particular, we discuss these aspects from culturally contextualized and semantically decontextualized dimensions, which is expected to facilitate broad international discourse centering on the three questions proposed at the end of this paper.