Uncovering Chinese pedagogy

spiral variation—the unspoken principle of algebra thinking used to develop chinese curriculum and instruction of the "two basics"

Xuhua Sun

pp. 651-667

in: Gabriele Kaiser, Helen Forgasz, Mellony Graven, Alain Kuzniak, Elaine Simmt, Binyan Xu (eds), Invited lectures from the 13th international congress on mathematical education, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Abstract

Many international research studies are conducted in the Western deductive tradition strongly influenced by a geometric perspective. During the past decades, the missing paradigm from an algebraic tradition has rarely been explored. I intend to present the algebraic perspective that structures inductive tradition in an effort to understand Chinese curriculum and instruction of the "Two Basics' and its unspoken principle, spiral variation. This study can deepen our understanding how the inductive reasoning that underpins early Chinese algebra provides a foundational cultural perspective for interpreting "indigenous' principles and their application. This discussion can enlighten our understanding of the Chinese tradition of mathematics education, which can in turn shed light on the research into algebra education from the perspective of problem variation.