Mathematics: Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers Understanding of

Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States by Liping Ma

In Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics, Liping Ma compares the math

knowledge of teachers from China and teachers from the United States. In the study she
conducted, she found that the above average U.S. teachers that she interviewed were focused
on math procedures, or completing the algorithm that will give the correct answer, whereas the
72 Chinese teachers showed that they understood the concepts behind the procedures (Ma, 1999,
p. 107). In the book, Ma looks at the intersection between math knowledge and pedagogy and
finds that U.S. teachers have fine pedagogical strategies, but that they lack the deep
mathematical thinking that drives real student understanding. She writes that a teachers subject
matter knowledge of school mathematics is a product of the interaction between mathematical
competence and concern about teaching and learning mathematics (p. 146). To this end,
teachers of mathematics must have that competence that U.S. teachers seem to lack.
Ma tested and interviewed both Chinese and American teachers on four different math
concepts that are taught in elementary school: subtraction with regrouping, multi-digit
multiplication, division with fractions, and the relationship between perimeter and area. She
found that when subtracting, U.S. teachers usually relied on borrowing to teach it as a
procedure. Often, they explained it in terms such as You cant subtract a bigger number from a
smaller number, so you have to go to the next digit and borrow a ten from there. [CITATION].
Most Chinese teachers, however, taught this math concept with the language of regrouping, or
decomposing a unit of higher value. These teachers truly understood their subject matter and
could clearly explain why the procedure of borrowing worked: we group numbers into the largest
base-10 group possible, and then into the next largest, and so on, which is what place value is.
This is why when the ones place of the minuend is smaller than that of the subtrahend, one can
break apart a group of the tens and group them instead with the ones without changing the total
value of the minuend. This is what we call regrouping and demonstrates the mathematical
concept behind the procedure of borrowing. In fact, most U.S. math curriculums such as
Everyday Math and Math in Focus have moved towards teaching regrouping rather than
borrowing (probably in the years since Ma conducted her study).
The problem may lie in the math education that many teachers received a generation or
two ago, such that many elementary school teachers do not have the deep understanding of
regrouping that Chinese teachers do. I am less familiar with how current U.S. curriculums deal
with the other math concepts that Ma focused on in her study, which come during later
elementary yearsmy experience with teaching elementary mathematics is limited to first- and
second-grade math. Its certainly possible that curriculums have been updated to reflect the more
conceptual teaching that the Chinese do, but it is also likely that, as with borrowing and
regrouping, U.S. teachers have grown up mostly learning only the algorithm, rather than the
mathematical thinking behind the algorithm.
I recently had a long conversation about this very topic with my roommate, who is a high
school math teacher and former middle school teacher in DPS. She has noticed that middle and

high school math teachers are troublingly attached to their preferred algorithms for math
computations because they are not very comfortable with the concepts behind math. She referred
to one specific example in multi-digit multiplication. Elementary school curriculums are moving
toward using the lattice method of multi-digit multiplication, which is just as much of an
algorithm as the traditional method of using 0s as placeholders (which is not exactly an accurate
description but is how most teacher explain it). When these children reach middle school,
however, the lattice method causes much consternation amongst their teachers, who do not know
the algorithm, have not studied it as part of their curriculum, and do not have the deep math
knowledge to understand why it works. If they were like the Chinese teachers that Ma
interviewed, they would be able to compute the problems in multiple different ways, as many of
the Chinese teachers did [CITATION]
I myself have worked in high school with colleagues who did not have an understanding
of the concepts that they are teaching. I once observed a ninth-grade math teacher teaching a
lesson on dividing with fractions; he taught only the procedure, and when I asked him why the
procedure worked, he could not give me an answer. When I worked in first- and second-grade
classrooms, I saw how little time the teachers devoted to studying the math curriculum (and
rightly so, because they had so little time for planning!). The elementary teachers I worked with
rarely explained the concepts behind procedures, or, if they did, they did not do so fully. In
addition, the teachers I have worked with have all told me that they understand language arts
more than they do math, so they put more focus and thought into the former. It seems that math
is not the strong suit of most teacherseven those who teach math at the secondary level!
Ultimately, my own experiences confirm what Ma describes about U.S. teachers.
The last thing that Ma discusses in the book is how teachers can gain a profound
understanding of fundamental mathematics. Some of the ways that the Chinese teachers had such
success with math are studying the teaching materials, talking about math with other teachers,
learning math from studentsthat is, listening to how they solve problems, as well as
investigating their questions with interestand, of course, doing more math (pp. 130-141). Ma
describes how Chinese teachers engage in learning about math from their fellow teachers (p.
137). I have not seen teachers in the United States collaborate to study math together at all,
except in one seminar that we had at Stanley. I found that math seminar, during which we spent
most of our time solving math problems together, to be enjoyable and exciting. I would love to
have the time to spend with other teachers learning and practicing math ourselves, and something
that I would like to commit to as an elementary school teacher is strengthening my own math
skills by practicing and learning the concepts behind the procedures that I teach.
Ma also points out that teachers sometimes disparage textbooks and curriculums,
believing that they can create a better plan. She writes that this is unnecessary, and that teachers
can and should use curriculum to inform their teaching, while using their own deep
understanding of math to bolster the curriculum (p. 150). She writes extensively about how
Chinese math teachers construct knowledge packages to help them teach concepts: in order to
teach subtraction with regrouping, for instance, students must already know related concepts
such as adding and subtracting within 10 and within 20, adding and subtracting as inverse
operations, and composing and decomposing a higher value unit (p. 19). This is my chief

takeaway from Mas research: that when I am teaching elementary mathematics, I must carefully
study the curriculum, make sure that I practice and understand the math contained in that
curriculum, and support the curriculum by creating knowledge packages for the concepts that my
students are learning, which should not be particularly difficult if I understand the concepts and
how they are related.