A Comparison Of Mathematics Education Between Shanghai And Malaysia

Over the past few decades, a considerable number of influential large-scale international comparative studies have been conducted in mathematics education. In these studies, students in Asian countries outperformed their counterparts in the West. However, the teaching methods and environment in Asian schools are considered to be not conductive to effective mathematics learning. This" paradox" has drawn the attention of many researchers towards the mathematics education of Asian countries. Nevertheless, most of the studies are focused on the "Confucius Heritage Cultural" countries-Japan, Korea, Singapore, Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Although Malaysia is an Asian country with 25.4% percent of Chinese consisting its population, Malaysia students did not do well in the comparative studies. Moreover, there is not yet much research about mathematics education in Malaysia. Based on the comparison between Shanghai and Malaysia in mathematics education, this research finds that there are many similarities between Shanghai and Malaysia in the areas such as mathematics curricular beliefs, mathematics curricular content and mathematics textbooks. As to teaching methods, however, the video analysis has indicated that Shanghai teachers do much better than Malaysia teachers. In addition, Shanghai has accomplished a comparatively mature system of in-service education for primary and secondary teachers. Many teachers suggested when they were interviewed that in-service education has been playing an important part in the advancement of their teaching ability. By contrast, Malaysia pays rather more attention to the pre-service education of teachers than in-service education, thus there is little in-service education available to the teachers. Besides, most of the teachers lack motivation for in-service education. When it comes to the beliefs about mathematics and mathematics learning, Shanghai and Malaysia teachers and students share a number of common ideas such as valuing the importance of mathematics and the efforts of the students in mathematics learning. There are also many different beliefs between them. For example, Malaysia teachers regard the maxim "practice makes perfect" as most important while Shanghai teachers strongly recommend summarizing mathematical methods during the course of practice. Furthermore, Malaysia teachers attach much importance on the procedurals of solving problems, whereas Shanghai teachers always put emphasis on logical thinking. As a conclusion, it is possible that the lack of effective in-service education of teachers has affected mathematics education of Malaysia.