ABSTRACT

Efforts to improve the quality of classroom instruction have led to ever-increased interests in research on excellent lessons (e.g., Li & Shimizu, 2009). “Excellence” is the result of social construction together with value judgment, so the meaning of excellent lessons can differ across different social contexts (e.g., Clarke, Emanuelsson, Jablonka, & Mok, 2006). Even in the same country/region, the connotations of an excellent lesson could vary across time periods. At the same time, researchers argued that “excellent” lessons within a country/region also share common characteristics over a period of time (e.g., Huang, Pang, & Li, 2009; Li & Yang, 2003). What often remains unclear is what might be changed in “excellent” classroom instruction and what might stay the same over the years. To develop a better understanding of the mathematics classroom instruction that is currently valued in China, we aimed to identify and examine possible changes in “excellent” mathematics lessons that were taught recently in comparison with those given years ago.