With the increasing communication between China and the United Sates, it is very common to find not only Chinese students study in the United Sates, but also many Chinese teachers impart both Western knowledge and Chinese culture in that country. Some of these teachers are so successful that their work and ideas have even impacted the American education system. Ma Liping, an ECNU alumna, is one of them.
Sitanfu Chinese School in the San Francisco Bay Area is widely known to all the Chinese living in Silicon Valley. The weekend school well-known for its curriculum of Chinese language and culture has attracted more and more Chinese parents to send their kids there. Just as the popularity of Stanford Chinese School, Ma Liping, founder of the school, is also well-known among the Chinese society in the United States.
Ma was born in 1951 in Shanghai. After graduation from high school, she became a rural teacher in a remote village of Jiangxi Province. After the ending of the Cultural Revolution, she passed the admission exam and became a student of ECNU. In 1989, she went to the United Statesand obtained her Ph.D in Stanford University years later.
Her doctoral thesis Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics Teachers Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States became a best seller in mathematics education in the United States and was translated into different languages. As an expert in mathematics education, Ma was later nominated a member of the National Mathemaics Advisory Panel of the US (2006-2008) .
During last 20 years, Ma Liping has been teaching at her school and developing materials for learning Chinese.At same time, she continued her research on math education.She often jokes that she is gone back to when she was a rural teacher, working on both Chinese and math. The Chinese teaching materials written by her has already been adopted by more than 100 Chinese schools all over the world. Why are they so well-received? In Ma Liping’ eyes, the success lies in the fact that the teaching materials have been revised and improved continuously in the teaching process.
Written by: Yao Run
Edited by: Liu Jinyu
