Transition from Textbook to Classroom Instruction in Mathematics: The Case of an Expert Chinese Teacher

This study reports how an expert Chinese teacher implements mathematics textbook lessons in enacted instruction. Our video analysis indicates that both textbook and enacted teaching included only one worked example; however, the teacher engaged students in unpacking the example in great depth. Both the textbook and the enacted teaching showed “concreteness fading” in students’ use of representations. However, the Chinese teacher incorporated students’ self-generated representations and facilitated students’ active modeling of quantitative relationships. Finally, the Chinese teacher asked a greater number of deep questions than were suggested by the textbook. These deep questions often occurred as clusters of follow-up questions that were either concept-specific or promoted comparisons which facilitated connection-making between multiple representations and solutions.