I should add that math teaching in Australia seems completely faddish and often wrongheaded to me, I was just interested in this particular difference. Which I guess ties in with the author's observation that teachers' math teaching ability/process is deeply grounded in how they were taught. This just happens to be how my generation was taught multiplication and it's clearly carrying on.

Faddish example: our schools don't teach long division at all anymore, it got dropped from the curriculum for being irrelevant (or too hard?)