Myths and Realities: Teaching of Mathematics in High-Achieving East Asian Countries

There is much interest in the international mathematics education community in relation to the “high-achieving East Asian” phenomenon. We briefly review some international studies on this and draw out some observations, especially to caution oversimplistic binary depictions of the work of teaching which is unhelpful in general but particularly unsuited to pedagogy used in some East Asian mathematics classrooms. In the next section of the chapter, as “insiders,” we paint summary portraits of mathematics teaching in some of these high-achieving East Asian jurisdictions and in so doing seek to provide rich descriptions of pedagogical distinctives. The third section draws on the individual portraits of the previous section to build on commonalities across the East Asian region. In the concluding section, we step back to reflect on this question, “Is there an East Asian pedagogy for mathematics education? And if so, what is its praxis?”