The papers in this symposium employ different analytical approaches to the study of the performative realization of competence in Asian and Western mathematics classrooms. Comparison across such culturally-disparate sites poses powerful questions regarding the way in which competence is conceived, promoted and performed by both teachers and students. All four papers make use of the extensive data set generated by the Learner’s Perspective Study (LPS). Data generation conformed to a common research design focusing on sequences of at least ten lessons, documented using three video cameras, and supplemented by the reconstructive accounts of classroom participants obtained in post-lesson video-stimulated interviews.

The mathematics teachers in each education system participating in LPS were identified for their locally-defined ‘teaching competence’ and for their situation in demographically diverse government schools in major urban settings. Applying the same definition of teaching competence across countries would misrepresent local practice. Local criteria included such things as status within the profession, respect of peers or the school community, or contributing to teacher professional development programs. Comparative analyses, such as those reported here, illustrate what is valued as quality mathematics teaching in each education system, as well as revealing the cultural values behind what can be counted as quality mathematics teaching in different contexts.

Each paper exploits the capacity of international comparative analyses to generate insights into local assumptions regarding competent practice. In the first paper, it is suggested that distinct discourses exist in any cultural setting in and about the mathematics classroom and that both discourses frame the nature of classroom participation for participants in different cultural settings. The second paper describes the case study of a Hong Kong teacher locally recognized as competent and reports how the teacher’s systematic planning and teaching direct the students to see the mathematics in a certain way. The third paper addresses conceptions of “high quality teaching” and “the competent teacher” in three Beijing mathematics classrooms, reporting both situated and transcendent patterns of classroom practice in comparing contemporary conceptions with established, traditional views of teacher competence. The final paper compares two classrooms in Germany and Japan using the results of an analysis of teacher questioning practices to illustrate the cultural-specificity of competent teaching practice.

Comparative studies that include both Western and Asian classrooms have demonstrated that the instructional practices of teachers in classrooms in different cultures are predicated on pedagogies that privilege different forms of student action. Culture enters into any consideration of teaching competence, both through the culturally-situated nature of the valued outcomes by which accomplished practice is empirically identified and through the evolution of the practice itself, which must reflect cultural values regarding acceptable modes of classroom communication.

Much has been written on the knowledge needed to teach mathematics effectively. Ultimately, however, any such knowledge must be performatively realised through classroom practice. Each paper in this symposium documents the context- and culture-specific nature of teacher competence and the entry points for each analysis are the events documented in specific mathematics classrooms. Teaching competence cannot be theorized in a culturally-neutral fashion.