Rongjin Huang

• Middle Tennessee State University

Cross-cultural lesson study has emerged as a promising approach for enhancing teacher professional development. While research has highlighted its potential, the specific mechanisms through which cross-cultural lesson study influences teacher learning remain unclear. This study examines a collaborative cross-cultural lesson study initiative involvi...

Maker Education (ME) focuses on fostering students’ Maker Mindsets (MM). However, prevailing ME practices often lack a structured approach, that impedes the effective development of students’ MM. To address this challenge, a Design Thinking-making pedagogy (DTMP) is used to design ME lessons through a three-month Lesson Study (LS) cycle. Employing...

Purpose This study aimed to explore teachers' learning processes through a hybrid cross-cultural lesson study (LS) because little is known about the learning process through this novel and promising LS approach. Design/methodology/approach This cross-cultural LS lasted over six months focusing on developing a research lesson (RL) related to linear...

Purpose This paper examines how mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) learn to enact equitable mathematics instruction using technology through lesson study (LS). Design/methodology/approach A LS team with three MTEs conducted three iterations of LS on teaching the Pythagorean Theorem in an in-person, technology-mediated environment. Many forms of...

This study aims to explore how a research-informed product, a hypothetical learning trajectory (HLT), was implemented by a group of Shanghai teachers in mathematics classrooms and promoted by a researcher through a Chinese lesson study. The instruction informed by the HLT served as a boundary object to promote conversations between the researcher a...

Purpose This study aimed to explore how an adapted theoretical framework by networking two theories could help document teachers' collective learning through lesson study. Design/methodology/approach Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth (IMPG) and Documentational Approach to Didactics (DAD) has been used individually to document tea...

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Shanghai, China, all school classes were delivered through an online environment from February 24 to May 22, 2020. To support this transition, the Shanghai Education Commission led expert teachers and specialists to develop a series of online video lessons based on the Shanghai unified curriculum, and suggested stude...

In the research reported in this paper we investigated teachers' changes when adopting and adapting to emergency online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the perspective of the Interconnected Model of Professional Growth (IMPG). By adapting complementary accounts methodology to research into teachers' changes when addressing the unexpecte...

Purpose This study aims to explore how a Chinese lesson study (LS) supports a teacher's learning of transforming curriculum reform ideas into classroom practices. Design/methodology/approach Data analyzed in this study included lesson plans, three videotaped research lessons, three audio-taped group meetings, interviews, the teacher's reflection j...

MM′X (M, M′ = transition metals, X = carbon or boron group elements) compounds experiencing magnetostructural transition have great potential in multifunctional applications due to the various magnetoresponsive effects. However, the poor mechanical properties hinder their practical applications. In the present work, the low-melting metal bonded MM′...

Materials with tunable negative thermal expansion (NTE) are highly demanded in various functional devices. La(Fe, Si)13-based compounds are promising NTE materials due to their outstanding NTE properties. However, their poor mechanical properties and related short service life restrict their practical applications. In this work, epoxy resin with po...

This study aimed to investigate teachers’ learning through researcher–teacher partnerships (RTPs). The theoretical framework, developed by Bannister, was applied to examine teacher learning in RTPs. Specifically, a case study of an RTP was conducted, in which university researchers collaborated closely with mathematics teachers. The data—including...

Purpose This paper presented the learning process of a group of primary mathematics teachers who participated in two iterations of lesson design, enactment and reflection in a Chinese Lesson Study. Design/methodology/approach An expansive learning theory was employed to examine the teachers’ learning process in lesson study (LS) on representing fr...

Teacher collaborative learning is key in teacher professional development. Yet, how teachers learn in cross-cultural professional development settings remains largely unexplored. This paper examines the case of a Chinese mathematics teacher who learned through addressing various challenges when teaching in an English school in a China-UK exchange p...

Purpose Finding ways in which technology can be used to modify, strengthen, scale up and sustain lesson study (LS) is an emerging field of research. It has become even more important due to a pandemic leading to teacher and student learning being delivered online. The purpose of this paper is to present research findings about experiences of online...

Purpose This study aimed to explore how a group of Chinese primary mathematics teachers learned through conducting an online cross-cultural lesson study between China and Australia. Design/methodology/approach An expansive learning theory was adopted to examine teachers' learning through collective activities across different activity systems. Mul...

Ferromagnetic-structural transformation has been studied widely in MnCoGe-based materials. However, the magnetostructural transition (MST) from antiferromagnetic (AFM) orthorhombic phase to ferromagnetic (FM) hexagonal phase, which may lead to a large inverse magnetocaloric effect (MCE), has rarely been reported. Here, the introduction of Mn vacanc...

Oriented polycrystalline Nd1 − xTbxCo5 alloys are fabricated successfully by the magnetic field bonding technique, and magnetocrystalline anisotropy (MCA) and rotating magnetocaloric effect (RMCE) have been studied systematically. Two successive spin-reorientation transitions (SRTs), “easy-plane” to “easy-cone” transition at TSR1 followed by “easy-...

This chapter aims to provide a holistic picture of the system of lesson study (LS) and its role in mathematics curriculum reform in China. By means of official documents (policy) and a review of literature, we begin by examining features of the teaching research system that is part of the infrastructure of LS in China. Following this introduction,...

Whole Number Arithmetic (WNA) appears as the very first topic in school mathematics and establishes the foundation for later mathematical content. Without solid mastery of WNA, students may experience difficulties in learning fractions, ratio and proportion, and algebra. The challenge of students’ learning and mastery of fractions, decimals, ratio...

Solving word problems is challenging in elementary schools, both for the teacher in teaching students to solve word problems and for the student in learning to solve them. This paper examines how the ideas of learning trajectory and variation pedagogy could be integrated as an instructional principle for teaching this content in the context of solv...

Pedagogical training is very important for prospective teachers’ preparation. In this chapter, three types of practice-based pedagogical training (field observations, microteaching, and student teaching) for prospective mathematics teachers in Chinese Mainland are introduced based on case studies. These types of pedagogical training programs provid...

Purpose To examine how teachers improve core instructional practices in teaching mathematics for problem solving through lesson study. The core practices included launching a task, implementing a task, and orchestrating students’ solutions. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted multiple-case study and survey methodologies. Each of three...

Purpose To explore what professional knowledge and competence (PKC) that knowledgeable others, namely, mathematics teaching research specialists (MTRS) in China, need to know, and how they may develop their PKC Design/methodology/approach This study adopts mixed methods. A survey on PKC with 549 MTRS is utilized to examine MTRS’ perceived held a...

Chinese students’ strong performance in mathematics in various international comparative studies has been noticed for decades (Fan & Zhu, 2004). In particular, Shanghai students’ outstanding performances in PISA (OECD, 2010, 2014) have stunned educators and policy makers around the world.

In China, mathematics textbooks based on unified national “mathematics curriculum standards” (MOE, 2011) are major and core resources for teachers’ teaching and students’ learning. Mathematics textbooks in China generally emphasize the following aspects: making use of learning situations for which students are familiar; arranging mathematical tasks...

Chinese students’ superior performance in mathematics in various international comparative studies (Fan & Zhu, 2004; OECD, 2010, 2014) has led to an increasing interest in exploring the characteristics of mathematics instruction in China (Fan, Wong, Cai, & Li, 2015; Li & Huang, 2013).

Both editors grew up in China and became high school mathematics teachers there. They learned about mathematics teaching in China not only as students, but also as teachers. Bianshi (i.e., changing or varying) teaching, or Bianshi exercise, viewed as a basic approach, has been used regularly in mathematics classroom instruction.

"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) prac...

This study compared the characteristics of mathematics knowledge needed for teaching algebra between China and the United States. An embedded mixed methods design was adapted (Creswell & Clark, 2007). The design of the main data set consists of written answers to a questionnaire which includes multiple choice items and open-ended items, while the s...

It is a paradoxical phenomenon that a seemingly unfavorable learning environment, such as the large-size classrooms dominated with traditional lecture-oriented instruction in China, produces high-achieving students in school mathematics (Fan & Zhu, 2004; Stevenson, Chen, & Lee, 1993). Some researchers have thus examined how Chinese students learn m...

“Algebra for everyone” has become a slogan of mathematics education reformers (e.g., Edwards, 1990), and the claim that all students will benefit from learning algebra is bolstered by research findings that those who take algebra courses in high school have higher chances to enter prestigious universities and get high-salary jobs (Moses & Cobb, 200...

Teacher-dominated classrooms with some student-centered elements are a perplexing phenomenon of Chinese mathematics classrooms. In-depth exploration of this phenomenon is helpful for understanding the features of mathematics teaching in China. This paper demonstrates how the teacher can encourage students to actively generate knowledge under the te...

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-266) Mode of access: World Wide Web.