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Basic Conditions of Early Mathematics Education—a Comparison between Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland

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A Correction to this article was published on 27 January 2020

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Abstract

Results of international comparison studies show substantially better mathematics performance of the investigated Asian than European students from the early years on. A Taiwanese-German Research Program (TaiGer) engages in exploring differences and similarities in the educational system, in teachers’ knowledge and beliefs and in teaching or learning practice in Taiwan and Germany. Embedded in this Research Program, this contribution focuses on early mathematics education. As mathematics is often seen as an internationally more or less homogeneous discipline, it could be assumed that differences in the educational outcomes could be explained by, e.g. cultural-societal factors, curriculum or instruction practice. This contribution gives an overview about results of studies analyzing the differences between children’s mathematical performance in Asia and Europe or America with a focus on early childhood education. For a sound comparison between countries aiming to analyze if cultural differences or other aspects (e.g. teaching practice or structural differences) are responsible for differences, basic conditions concerning teaching and learning should be controlled. At first sight, it could be recognized that, next to the cultural background, Germany and Taiwan differ extremely in basic frame conditions (e.g. preservice training) concerning early mathematics education. For this reason, this contribution analyzed if, with a third well-considered European country, a comparative design for ongoing research could be possible, where pairwise similarities allow to clarify relations between differences in early mathematics education and the cultural background on the one hand and early mathematics education and institutional frame conditions or the teachers’ professional knowledge on the other hand.

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Change history

  • 27 January 2020

    The original version of this article unfortunately contains incorrect formatting of section 2 sub-headings and Tables 2 to 5 with typing errors in Tables 4 and 5.

Notes

  1. We are aware, that the term “country” is not exactly suitable, because there are no uniformed cultural contexts within one country and the range of the performance differ within the country as well. If we refer to similarities and differences, we relate to means of achievement of a particular country.

  2. International collaboration funded by DFG Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany, and Ministry of Science and Technology, R.O.C., Taiwan

  3. In Switzerland there are three official languages: German, French and Italian.

  4. For readability purpose, we use Germany, Switzerland, Taiwan in the following, though we refer to the official documents of Lower Saxony, Thurgau and Taiwan.

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Acknowledgements

DFG Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany, and Ministry of Science and Technology, R.O.C., Taiwan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Osnabrück University, Institut of Mathematics, Osnabrueck, Germany

    Hedwig Gasteiger

  2. Thurgau University of Teacher Education, Kreuzlingen, Switzerland

    Esther Brunner

  3. Tainan University of Technology, Tainan, Taiwan

    Ching-Shu Chen

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  1. Hedwig Gasteiger
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  2. Esther Brunner
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  3. Ching-Shu Chen
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Correspondence to Hedwig Gasteiger.

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The original version of this article was revised:The original version of this article unfortunately contains incorrect formatting of section 2 sub-headings and Tables 2 to 5 with typing errors in Tables 4 and 5.

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Gasteiger, H., Brunner, E. & Chen, CS. Basic Conditions of Early Mathematics Education—a Comparison between Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland. Int J of Sci and Math Educ 19, 111–127 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-019-10044-x

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