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Valuing from Student’s Perspectives as a Lens to Understand Mathematics Learning: The Case of Hong Kong

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Views and Beliefs in Mathematics Education

Abstract

Values, as a culturally specific notion, have a vital role to play in classroom mathematics learning. In this chapter, we argue that valuing, especially from the student’s perspective, serves as a lens for us to better understand how they perform in mathematics learning. To develop such a lens, we investigated the componential structure of Hong Kong mathematics students by utilising a values questionnaire as a lens to better understand what the students find important in mathematics learning. A principal component analysis has been used in this study with the objective to interrogate the data. The analysis of the data led to the identification of nine components valued by Hong Kong students in their mathematics learning. We discuss the findings in terms of the Hong Kong culture and context and the value categories and we suggest implications for future research studies.

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Acknowledgements

This paper reports on the WIFI project funded by the Direct Grant for Research, project number 2080075, from the Faculty of Education at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Any opinions and conclusions are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the university.

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Correspondence to Tasos Barkatsas .

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Barkatsas, T., Law, H.Y., Wong, N.Y., Seah, W.T. (2018). Valuing from Student’s Perspectives as a Lens to Understand Mathematics Learning: The Case of Hong Kong. In: Rott, B., Törner, G., Peters-Dasdemir, J., Möller, A., Safrudiannur (eds) Views and Beliefs in Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01273-1_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01273-1_5

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