Renowned math educator shares insights about 45-year 'Qingpu Experiment'
Chinese mathematics educator Gu Lingyua delivered a plenary lecture about a 45-year math teaching reform program in Shanghai at the ongoing 14th International Congress on Mathematical Education on Tuesday at East China Normal University, the main venue for the event.
The 77-year-old is the second Chinese scholar to deliver a plenary lecture at the quadrennial event, the largest academic conference on mathematical education in the world. The first was famous Chinese mathematician Hua Luogeng, who delivered his speech 41 years ago at the fourth congress in Berkeley, California, USA.
Gu is an honorary professor at the East China Normal University School of Mathematical Science and former deputy director of the Shanghai Academy of Educational Sciences. He is famous for launching a math teaching reform program – the "Qingpu Experiment" – which has involved three generations of educators.
The experiment well known in China started in Shanghai's Qingpu District in 1977, when China resumed its nationwide university entrance examination system, and will run through 2022.
It was initiated when Gu was a math education researcher in Qingpu and found only 2.8 percent of 4,300 polled middle school students there passed a unified test related to basic knowledge of math, and 23.5 percent received zeros.
Since then, three rounds of 15-year research and reforms in math teaching have been launched to improve the general local math education quality, break through students' high cognitive bottlenecks and cultivate students' capability in further exploration and innovation in math.
"The first period was to explore feasible ways to improve education quality in most common situations," Gu said.
In this period, Gu and his colleagues spent three years in surveying students' math learning, including their learning attitudes, methods and performance. They then selected seven local schools and 50 teachers to learn about problems and useful experiences in math education before screening out the most effective teaching approaches, such as reviewing students' homework face to face and encouraging students to carry out explorative studies. The approaches were then promoted in all local schools.
With their efforts, 16 percent of the final-year students in local middle schools passed the math test in the graduation exam in 1979, and the portion increased to 85 percent in 1986.
In 1992, the end of the first period of reform, the national education commission recognized the program as a major achievement in basic education reform and promoted its practices nationwide.
After improving students' test scores, they began to work on how to make students become "smarter." In this period, they developed an approach to guide students to try to develop their cognitive ability rather than merely memorizing mathematical concepts and practicing by doing exercises.
In the past decade, they are paying more attention to students' innovative abilities and putting forward the approach of action education.
According to Ban Liya, vice principal of Qingpu Experimental Middle School, where the education reform started, the school now would organize extensive courses based on students learning conditions. Students have been engaged in issues such as how to design the Galileo Space Amphitheater to allow it to hold as many people as possible and the growing model of a water hyacinth.
"With such challenging problems, we wish to guide students to solve problems in real life with mathematical thinking," said Ban. "It can not only encourage students to innovate, but also push teachers to conduct research and improve their own teaching skills. The experiment is still on the way today."
"This experiment helped us find out problems in mathematics education in China and offer solutions, in which we have summarized our own experiences," said Gu. "Against the backdrop of globalized education, to share this Chinese empirical study with the rest of the world and accept assessments by international peers will help push the development of math education in China."