The Big Question: why do Asian maths teaching methods work so well?

In recent years, you might have noticed that several Asian countries have been in the news for their mathematics achievements. International comparisons are regularly conducted so that we know how students in different countries perform on similar maths tasks. Asian countries do really well. The main comparisons for maths are PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study).

In this course we pose the following key questions:

• Why do certain Asian countries do so well in international comparisons?

• What distinctive features do their classroom mathematics education have?

• How can we adopt those quality features, so that other countries can profit as well?

What are your initial thoughts on these topics?