Wee Tiong Seah

• PhD (Monash)
• Professor at University of Melbourne

This study aims to identify teachers’ selection/adoption of valuing pedagogy (VP) to implement an affect-focused mathematics teaching design with technological support. Valuing pedagogy is defined as teaching methods to address educational values and operationally defined as perceived, implemented, and received curricula, manifested by teacher perc...

School STEM education thrives on the quality of interdisciplinary pedagogical approaches, which inherently require science teachers to engage in productive and collaborative efforts with their colleagues from other disciplines. The sociological forces that shape the performance of teacher interdisciplinary collaborations have been relatively unders...

Following on from a prior mapping of elementary school students’ mathematical wellbeing (MWB) in Chengdu, China, an intervention program was trialled in two Grade Three classrooms based on grouping students according to unfulfilled values. The program utilised customised pedagogical experiences for each group with the aim to foster value fulfilment...

Knowing students’ values of mathematics learning is important for effective instruction. There has been a lack of studies analysing students’ descriptive responses in the values-in-mathematics-education research community, however. Against this trend, this chapter presents a text mining approach, specifically Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequen...

Mathematical wellbeing (MWB) is the experience of positive feelings and functioning linked to the fulfillment of seven ultimate values (accomplishment, cognitions, engagement, meaning, perseverance, positive emotions, and relationships) in the mathematics classroom. The study in this chapter psychometrically tests and then measures Australian Year...

A total of 1,256 students selected through stratified random sampling from 18 primary and public secondary schools as a fair sample across urban and rural settings in the Cape Coast Metropolis of Ghana responded to the 'what I find important (in my mathematics learning)' questionnaire. Section A contained 64 Likert type questions, and section B con...

This exploratory study has been designed to investigate Chinese language learners' (CLLs) reading comprehension when solving additive word problems. 200 primary one students (including 59 CLLs) in eight Hong Kong mainstream schools were asked to translate five Chinese word problems into diagrams or arithmetic forms (number sentences or equations)....

This paper reports an intervention study in the teaching of fraction concepts at a village school in Hong Kong. The classes consisted of 60 Grade three students with different cultural backgrounds, including African, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Nepalese, and Pakistani. The study represents one of the relatively few studies that investigate the effec...

Innovative practices in mathematics pedagogy at all levels of schooling are needed to better prepare our students to thrive amidst the demands of living in the 21st century, given that in many jurisdictions mathematics performance has been flat and students’ attitude toward mathematics has dipped. Beyond cognitive knowledge and skills, and beyond a...

Around the world the prevalence of mathematics anxiety and disengagement point to a poor sense of student ‘mathematical wellbeing’. Mathematical wellbeing is defined here as the fulfilment of one’s ultimate or core values, accompanied by positive feelings and functioning in mathematics education. Yet student wellbeing and how to support it in speci...

Globally, many students experience low mathematical wellbeing, defined here as the fulfilment of one’s core values, accompanied by positive feelings and functioning in the mathematics classroom. To increase positive feelings about and engagement in mathematics, there is a need to better understand students’ values and align practices to supporting...

This paper reports an intervention study with 60 Primary three students in Hong Kong mathematics classrooms in which the language of instruction (English) was not the first language for neither the teachers nor their students. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of storytelling to develop fraction language and concepts bas...

One hundred and eighty ethnic minority students studying in Hong Kong mainstream schools were found to value knowledge, activities, practice, product, inquiry, process, feedback, and technology in their mathematics learning. To identify these values, a mixed methods approach was adopted, using a values questionnaire as a lens to identify what stude...

258 Grade 3 students in a suburban primary school located in Chengdu, China responded to an open-ended questionnaire item regarding their beliefs about mathematics. The traditional beliefs attracted the most number of students, followed by integral, feeling good, and constructivist beliefs. Since the questionnaire also identified the students’ valu...

The 21st Century is characterised by technological advances which is the Fourth Industrial Revolution, climate change, and the COVID19 pandemic, for examples. The role of mathematics in each of these phenomena has been central and crucial. As such, it is an opportune time now to take stock of events that are (re-)shaping the world, so that we can b...

Thirteen different research articles which report on a programmatic research on the enacted secondary school mathematics curriculum in Singapore have been perused in the preparation for this chapter. It considers the instructional practices associated with Singapore secondary mathematics teachers, and identifies possible contextual factors that fac...

Purpose Given the unclear relationship between cognition and affect, this article reports on a study exploring how the volitional variable of values may provide some explanation for students with excellent performance despite a negative attitude toward mathematics. Design/Approach/Methods It is part of an international “What I Find Important (in m...

Valuing constitutes an important aspect of mathematics pedagogy and hence student learning outcomes. This study surveyed 416 students from Cape Coast, Ghana to explore what senior high school students in this country in West Africa valued in their study of mathematics. The data collected were analyzed using principal component analysis. The results...

This paper reports on an ongoing interventionist project where the notion of values is a driver for the revitalization of teaching mathematics. The designing, gathering and analyzes of data from both students and teachers, undertaken by the school staff, on what both students and staff value in mathematics, and the relationship between the values,...

Purpose The high incidence of mathematics anxiety and disengagement in mathematics points to poor student well-being in many mathematics classrooms. Poor well-being may arise in part from poor alignment between student values and classroom experiences. Yet, what student well-being is and how to support it within specific subjects is poorly understo...

Purpose This article identifies an issue in mathematics education, that is, the perceived lack of emphasis in recent times of the roles that the “person” plays in the development of mathematics. The purpose is to examine how the values/valuing might contribute to addressing the issue. Design/Approach/Methods “Data” were collected from several purp...

Purpose Research has confirmed that students’ mathematics values significantly affect their mathematics learning. Accordingly, understanding how students’ values form and change, especially during different learning stages, is an important topic. Design/Approach/Methods This study administered a questionnaire to investigate the values of primary,...

Children are innately mathematical and explore mathematical concepts through play. However, educator beliefs about mathematics can impact the inclusion of mathematics in early childhood education (ECE). Recent research has suggested that spatial reasoning is a key concept which forms the foundations of mathematics learning. The theoretical argument...

Individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the fastest growing disability group, exhibit varying degrees of intellectual ability. Students with ASD are increasingly held accountable to academic standards comparable to their peers. Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is widely considered best practice for supporting these students. Twent...

This commentary unpacks and interprets the various attributes that were examined in the chapters included in this section, that is, interest, motivation, personal meanings, and values. It looks at how they extend and deepen our understanding of the roles played by values and valuing in mathematics education research. It emphasises the opportunity f...

Although the ideas of values and valuing have been totemic notions in education for forever, when applied to mathematics they become quite problematic. Even today for many mathematic teachers and learners, mathematics is a value-free space. For them, school mathematics is learning the skills of manipulating numbers before moving to the more abstrac...

This paper discusses some of the recurrent issues which the authors have noticed in educational research. These might be concerned with the nature of social science research, such as its representation of the reality of student learning, the role for replication studies, and the tolerance for disagreements. There are also issues related to the rese...

In this article we explore gender differences in the valuing of mathematics by Hong Kong primary and secondary students have been investigated. The participants were 1081 upper primary school (Grades 5 and 6) and secondary school (Grades 8 and 9) students from various metropolitan Hong Kong schools. An Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted to...

This study aims to reveal features of student talk over a sequence of consecutive mathematics lessons in a large-size class in mainland China. By examining the time allocation for student talk and the number of Chinese characters spoken by the students, this study finds that, in some of the lessons observed, student talk added up to a longer durati...

This article looks back and also looks forward at the values aspect of school mathematics teaching and learning. Looking back, it draws on existing academic knowledge to explain why the values construct has been regarded in recent writings as a conative variable, that is, associated with willingness and motivation. The discussion highlights the tri...

This article looks back and also looks forward at the values aspect of school mathematics teaching and learning. Looking back, it draws on existing academic knowledge to explain why the values construct has been regarded in recent writings as a conative variable, that is, associated with willingness and motivation. The discussion highlights the tri...

This engaging open access book discusses how a values and valuing perspective can facilitate a more effective mathematics pedagogical experience, and allows readers to explore multiple applications of the values perspective across different education systems. It also clearly shows that teaching mathematics involves not only reasoning and feelings,...

This study examined teacher questioning practices over a sequence of consecutive lessons in China. Based on the IRF (initiation–response–follow-up) framework, a comprehensive coding system was developed to analyze what kinds of verbal questions were initiated by the teachers to elicit mathematical information and in what ways the teachers made use...

Values, as a culturally specific notion, have a vital role to play in classroom mathematics learning. In this chapter, we argue that valuing, especially from the student’s perspective, serves as a lens for us to better understand how they perform in mathematics learning. To develop such a lens, we investigated the componential structure of Hong Kon...

Spatial reasoning is a set of cognitive functions, processes and skills that enable us to understand and describe representations and spatial relationships between objects, ourselves and our environment-it is a life skill. Spatial reasoning is at the core of mathematical thinking. There are three key areas of spatial reasoning associated with mathe...

During the last decades, curriculum reform has been implemented in mainland China to emphasize classroom interaction in mathematics teaching and learning. The intention to create more chances for classroom interaction in large-size classrooms has led to the introduction of self-learning guide which allows students to go through the learning content...

This chapter introduces the reader to the What I Find Important (in my mathematics learning) study (WIFI), conducted by a consortium of 21 research teams from 18 economies. It uses the same questionnaire to assess what students value in their respective mathematics education experiences. Two case economies, Hong Kong and Japan, provide the context...

1256 students from 18 primary and secondary state schools across urban and rural settings in the Cape Coast Metropolis of Ghana responded to the ‘What I Find Important (in my mathematics learning)’ questionnaire. The data analysed suggested that students in Ghana valued in their mathematics learning: achievement, relevance, fluency, authority, ICT,...

Values are the personal convictions which one finds important. Three different aspects which are associated with mathematics education differently are identified, namely, values through mathematics education, values of mathematics education, and values for mathematics. These are paired with Bishop's (1996) conceptions of general educational, mathem...

This study draws on theories relating to the local aspects of mathematical knowledge and to mathematics pedagogy to explore how the teaching and learning activities carried out in mathematics classrooms in Ghana deal with these aspects. It focussed on the teaching of measurement of money at the primary school level. The primary school level was con...

What an individual values and regards as important has a significant impact on his or her learning. Classroom instruction would be even more effective if what the teacher regards as important in his or her pedagogical practice are aligned with what students regard as important too. Given this background, this study sought to find out what Korean st...

This article provides an exploratory case study that examines what one teacher indicated as unexpected as she worked to become more purposeful about her classroom discourse practices. We found that she highlighted three areas as being unexpected: (1) aspects of lesson enactment; (2) characteristics of student learning and (3) her own intentionality...

More than ever before, teachers need to value the cultural diversity amongst their students and to value the diversity of mathematical ideas their students bring with them to class. In this chapter, we emphasise the need for the valuing of diversity in ways which are inclusive and empowering to both teachers and their students. Yet, this is not abo...

Through the interpretation of a set of data from a research study that investigated grade 5 and 6 students’ preferences among three types of mathematical tasks, this chapter presents an alternative way in which data might be interpreted. While it was found that across the areas of number and geometry, the three types of tasks were most preferred ac...

This study was designed to extend the understanding of teachers' questioning practices in classrooms through a fine-grained analysis of mathematics lessons taught by two competent junior secondary teachers separately from mainland China and Australia. A comprehensive coding system was developed to analyze what kinds of verbal questions were initiat...

This study examines a teacher’s questioning strategies in mathematics classrooms in China when implementing reform-based mathematics curriculum. It explores teacher’s strategies to deal with the tensions involved in the creation of opportunities for students to express and communicate mathematics ideas while ensuring the productivity of mathematics...

The tradition of the MERGA four-year review provides evidence of sustained and evolving research within the Australasian mathematics education community. As part of the editing team for the previous review (Forgasz et al., 2008) we appreciate the opportunity to reflect on that review and to provide some personal insights into recent developments.

It has become increasingly recognized that what teachers and students value affect teaching and learning in general and in the area of mathematics in particular. Yet, the extent to which this is so varies across cultural regions. In recent years, how the ethnic Chinese teach and learn mathematics has attracted much attention worldwide. It is precis...

The Southeastern region of Taiwan, Taitung, is home to the highest concentration of indigenous communities. Their status on indicators such as education level, SES, and life span are worse than other ethnic groups. They are also found to underperform in school mathematics. This paper reports on a study that had been designed to understand more abou...

Drawing on 1386 questionnaire responses, 11-and 12-year old primary students in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan valued the same six orientations in their mathematics learning. These are achievement, relevance, practice, communication, information and communication technologies [ICT], and feedback. Each of these six values was also embraced to...

Grades 5/6 students in Melbourne reported the valuing of achievement, open-endedness, relevance, humanism, ICT, and openness most in mathematics learning. Although prior research suggested that students in East Asia valued achievement most as well, there was an observed difference in the nature of this valuing in Australia. Knowledge of what studen...

Drawing on 1386 questionnaire responses, 11-and 12-year old primary students in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan valued the same six orientations in their mathematics learning. These are achievement, relevance, practice, communication, information and communication technologies [ICT], and feedback. Each of these six values was also embraced to...

This paper reports on a study which sought to investigate how social and political influences affect students’ preference for language of instruction in mathematics in Ghana, where the language of instruction from grade 4 onwards in school is not the students’ main language. 4 focus group interviews were carried out with 16 primary school students,...

Considerations of how mathematics can be effectively taught and learnt may be cognitive, affective or sociocultural in approach. ‘What students value in effective mathematics learning’ is a research study of the Third Wave Project, an international consortium of research teams adopting a sociocultural approach to investigate the harnessing of relev...

This article reports on a scoping study conducted in Australia and Sweden to facilitate the understanding of the values that are associated with effective learning of mathematics in Asian classrooms. Nineteen ‘Western’ values have been identified, of which three (explanation, sharing and fun) were commonly embraced in the two countries. It is also...

Look, I mean, I have my own way [of teaching]. Of course I have my own way, the way I was taught, the way I do things in Romania. So that comes back to me all the time. 33 years I lived there, so 33 years I used maths in that certain way. ⎯ Carla, teacher participant 1.

This paper reports on part of a study which investigated the mathematical task type preferences of Grade 5 and 6 students from Victoria, Australia and Chongqing, China. Through the administration of a questionnaire to 1109 Chinese and 689 Australian students, it was found that across the topics of Number and Geometry, tasks situated within a contex...

Mathematics educational research on high performing countries highlights the role of cultural values. This paper reports on the qualitative phase of a project, which aims to identify some of the values underlying effective mathematics learning in the primary classroom, and to explore how these were valued by the teacher and students. Amongst the 13...

Researchers are now pointing to the fact that mathematics that was once regarded as cultureⁱ² and value free is no longer regarded as such. Views about the nature of mathematical facts being absolute and unquestionable have changed in recent times. Mathematics education researchers have therefore highlighted the need for the recognition of children...

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This chapter argues that school mathematics involves more than just the “performance” of students and that “working mathematically” means far more than being good at a specified set of skills, as well as more than being able to show mastery of various conceptual structures. It suggests that experienced teachers understand that the wellbeing of many...

This research is a part of a national project to identify effective sustainable and embedded use of ICTs leading to improved educational outcomes. The project identified six schools and conducted a qualitative case study analysis out of which eleven successful strategies were reported. One of these strategies was observed at a primary school and de...

110 pre-service teachers' reflections of what were co-valued in effective mathematics lessons in Melbourne (Australia) and Singapore were analysed in a research study reported in this paper. 64 values were recorded, of which 29 were unique to Melbourne. These values were predominantly mathematics educational/pedagogical in nature. A new category of...

Mathematics is a subject that appears to be studied in school curriculum all over the world. However, whilst in some societies mathematical practices reflects the mathematics that is studied in schools, in other societies some of the mathematical practices in the society differ from those in schools. This paper reports on some of students’ transiti...

The research field of values in school mathematics teaching and learning has been conceptualised in explicit ways and developed since the late 1980s by Alan Bishop. The article that stimulated the composition of this chapter (see Bishop, 1999) is a demonstration of Bishop's identification of the need for the academic community to bring together con...

International Perspectives on Education draws on the knowledge and experience of a distinguished team of international educationists, including Howard Gardner and Kristján Kristjánsson. Each chapter can be accessed as a resource on a specific topic, but the chapters are also grouped into three sections to provide an invaluable source of thinking an...

This report is part of a study being conducted with Grades 5 and 6 students in primary schools in Victoria, Australia, exploring the qualities that are co-valued by teachers and their students in particularly effective mathematics lessons. Effective mathematics lessons is a function of productive interactions between students and their teachers in...