The main body of KTEM (Chapters 1–4) presents the results of interviews with elementary school teachers from the U.S. (23 in all) and China (72 in all). The U.S. teachers were roughly evenly split between experienced teachers and beginners.
Ma judged the group as a whole to be “above average”. In particular, although “math anxiety” is rampant among elementary school teachers, this group had positive attitudes about mathematics: they overwhelmingly felt that they could handle basic mathematics and that they could learn advanced mathematics. The Chinese teachers were from schools chosen to represent the range of Chinese teaching experience and expertise: urban schools and rural, stronger schools and weaker.