Thorough Understanding of the Textbook – A Significant Feature of Chinese Teacher Manuals

Through an analysis of a popular Chinese elementary school mathematics teacher manual, this chapter discusses a significant feature of teacher manual, namely, the manual is designed to help teachers achieve a thorough understanding of student text mathematically and pedagogically. Using multi-digit number multiplication, this chapter discusses the in-depth analyses and detailed suggestions for the core part of a lesson with concrete examples. In particular, it argues that an in-depth analysis of student text is the main focus of the guide. It also argues that concerted efforts are made to help create an environment that helps teachers professionally and teachers need to study the student text carefully in order to conduct classroom instruction effectively.