Cross-Cultural Comparative Study on Mathematics Teachers Beliefs and Practices

<p>The diversity in the student academic achievements is caused, firstly, by the quality of teaching. That&rsquo;s why there are a lot of cross-cultural studies focusing on teachers nowadays. A special place in the school education is given to mathematics. The paper describes the results of the research aimed to compare mathematics practicing teachers&rsquo; beliefs about general approaches on teaching and learning, their beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning and their real classroom practice in four countries: Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Russia.</p><p>NorBA (Nordic-Baltic comparative research in mathematics education) questionnaire was used in this study. The special place is given to the justification of a cross-cultural comparability of the results and questionnaire&rsquo;s validisation.</p><p>There were obtained statistically significant differences for all analyzed scales. Math teachers&rsquo; general beliefs about teaching are related with their view of effective mathematics teaching. Teachers&rsquo; beliefs are realized in their classroom practice. Russian teachers demonstrated a significantly higher level of constructivism and Estonian teachers combine both approaches. Russian teachers and Estonian Russian-speaking teachers are closer than Russian and Latvian Russian-speaking teachers.&nbsp;</p>