Reconceptualizing student-centered pedagogies beyond Western frameworks: insights from Chinese mathematics classrooms

International conceptualizations of student-centered pedagogies are predominantly shaped by Western theories, which often position student-centered and teacher-centered pedagogies as opposing orientations. Such conceptualizations potentially embed biases that reflect Western cultural values and curriculum ideologies. This study investigated how student-centered pedagogies are conceptualized and implemented within the Chinese context, and the extent to which these practices depart from Western frameworks. Drawing on 26 observed mathematics lessons from a Chinese reformed school that claimed to use student-centered pedagogies, the inductive analysis revealed that student-centered pedagogies in China took a distinctive, culturally adapted form. Notably, the enactment of student-centered pedagogies in these classrooms resulted from deliberate training and systematic preparation rather than emerging spontaneously. In addition, Chinese teachers in these student-centered lessons encouraged divergent problem-solving approaches alongside a consistent emphasis on uniform strategies, and they simultaneously acted as facilitators while maintaining strong authority. These findings suggest not only that student-centered and teacher-centered pedagogies are not necessarily opposing orientations, but also that features commonly categorized as teacher-centered can function as enabling conditions through which student-centered pedagogies are realized. Based on these findings, we propose a dependency model that reconceptualizes the relationship between student-centered and teacher-centered pedagogies by arguing that the enactment of student-centered pedagogies may depend on practices traditionally categorized as teacher-centered. By extending existing Western conceptualizations of student-centered pedagogies, this study highlights how pedagogical principals are negotiated and reinterpreted across cultural contexts.