Shanghai Maths: teacher-led and student-centred?

In November 2015 the Shanghai Exchange reached the secondary school stage with mathematics teachers from China teaching year 7 and 8 classes in English schools. The maths hubs organised observations of the lessons, which were accompanied by an introduction to Shanghai Maths from teachers who had visited China in September and an analytical discussion after the lessons. The two teachers from the Sussex Maths Hub who ran the event I attended did an excellent job of reflecting on their experiences in Shanghai in an insightful way. Unlike the Schools Minister who writes that the exchange is about showing teachers Shanghai's “perfect formula for learning", they acknowledged the good practice that already exists in the UK. The two teachers from Shanghai also demonstrated a highly professional and critical approach when they analysed their lessons with the observers. 

It is indicative of the consistency of practice in Shanghai that the event did not teach me much more about the system than I had learned from attending a hub event during the primary exchange. In the post I wrote after that event, I characterised Shanghai Maths as teacher-led and focused exclusively on mathematical concepts and procedures (as opposed to inquiry which can be student-led and involves reflection and regulation). However, since then, the organisers of the exchange have described Shanghai Maths as teacher led but student centred. While this phrase is intriguing, it (or, rather, half of it) proves to be misplaced. 

If we take ‘student-centred’ to mean that teachers adjust their teaching by taking account of children's levels of understanding, then at no stage did the lesson I observed appear to be student-centred. There was neither assessment for learning, nor assessment of learning. Questioning was focused on getting the required answer and did not probe students’ understanding. Exercise books were treated as note books without any evidence of a teacher-student dialogue. While it is easy to discuss a lesson in terms of what it did not contain, I have seen teachers in the UK threatened with competency proceedings for teaching lessons that did not include regular assessment from which to show progress. One fellow observer commented to me that a UK teacher might be in trouble if observed teaching the lesson.

Interestingly, then, the Department for Education’s promotion of Shanghai methods might founder on the systemic demands it already makes of teachers through Ofsted and senior leaders. Of course, these considerations in no way count against Shanghai Maths, but they do remind us how difficult it will be to transplant the method into the English education system.

The description of student-centred, it transpires, relates more to the norms embedded in the culture of Shanghai classrooms. The exchange organisers herald such norms as “students commenting on each other’s work” and a “relentless insistence on pupils giving reasons." These were not evident in the lesson I observed. Indeed, the lesson was designed purely at a mathematical level with a focus on precise questions that aimed to develop understanding in small steps. There was no attempt to develop (and certainly not negotiate) what Professor Paul Cobb* has called social and socio-mathematical norms of classroom interaction.