Mathematics Education in Asia: Curriculum and Its Origins
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
11-20-2024
Abstract
This chapter depicts a portion of the vast landscape of the post-World War II history of Asian mathematics education by focusing on four countries: India, Indonesia, Japan, and Thailand. They have been chosen to provide diversity with regard to both their history and their levels of educational success. Indonesia and India, beginning from positions of massive illiteracy, have struggled both to utilize and to break free of long histories of European colonization. Japan, never colonized, had begun establishing a robust educational system in the late nineteenth century. But in the mid-twentieth century, the country endured enormous material and psychological devastation associated with defeat in World War II, followed by US occupation. Japan’s emergence from these difficult circumstances to become a high performer on international tests has sparked worldwide interest in its mathematics education system, while internally there has persisted considerable dissatisfaction. Thailand, beginning from a somewhat better position of literacy than India or Indonesia and exhibiting pride in its cultural unity and avoidance of colonization, has forged an increasingly ambitious program to educate its citizens mathematically. Tables describing the content of the curricula for grades four and eight are provided, showing considerable commonality, along with occasional divergence. All four countries were influenced to some degree by the “modern mathematics” curricula emanating from the West in the 1960s, and each has likewise experienced reactions back to more basic content. There has been a clear trend in recent years for more focus on probability, statistics, and data analysis. The enduring effects of cultural, political, and economic factors are noted, although not explored in depth.
Recommended Citation
Roberts, D.L., Banerjee, R., Vistro-Yu, C.P. (2024). Mathematics Education in Asia: Curriculum and Its Origins. In: Clements, M.(., Kaur, B., Lowrie, T., Mesa, V., Prytz, J. (eds) Fourth International Handbook of Mathematics Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51474-6_3
