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| Ahead of Print | Last Modified: 4 December 2025
Engaging With Mathematics: Exploring Different Learning Environments at the Elementary School Level
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Abstract: This article examines the “effectiveness” of school‐level mathematics and explores how teachers’ instruction, within classrooms, contributes to an effective learning. By using multiple data sources, including classroom observations and teacher interviews, we found that students from “effective schools” receive more intellectual support than students in “typical schools” and benefit from better learning environments overall. We also found that the overall intellectual quality differs as per students’ ability level, favoring students of “lower ability” when they are enrolled in effective schools. Teacher interviews suggest that teachers from effective schools tend to hold higher expectations for low‐ability students than in typical schools and know how to adapt to them by adopting individualized instruction to meet their learning needs.
Keywords: classroom learning environment; effective schools; elementary schools; mathematics; typical schools
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Vol 14 (2026): Educational Equity and Sustainable Development: Stories From the Greater Bay Area in China (In Progress)
© Hua Ran, Walter G. Secada, Uma Gadge, Denghui Liu. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.