 | Price Comparisons: Rental | | Sorry, the textbook you were looking for is not available as Rental, at any of the stores we searched. | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | In a time when educators and politicians in the United States are fumbling for a fix--from vouchers to smaller class sizes--for ailing public schools, it's refreshing to read the more sophisticated take on what can be done to improve American education found in The Teaching Gap, a straightforward analysis of approaches towards teaching around the world. James W. Stigler, a UCLA psychology professor, and James Hiebert, an education professor at the University of Delaware, argue that America's culture of teaching needs to be changed before we see any real change in student achievement--and they're not simply talking about higher pay and more respect. The bulk of The Teaching Gap examines the cultural differences among teaching methods, with detailed accounts of video observations of eighth-grade math teachers that were part of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS (which Stigler directed). American teachers in the videos tend to emphasize terms and procedures, thinking of math as a set of tedious skills. They try to interest students with praise and real-life problems. In contrast, Japanese teachers are more likely to emphasize ideas, expecting the concepts alone to stir students' natural curiosity. They weave together lessons that have a distinct beginning, middle, and end. Teachers in the other countries are more likely to share lessons on what works in the classroom and receive more sophisticated training, the authors found. Only seven out of 41 nations scored lower than the U.S. in TIMSS, placing American eighth-graders with those from Cyprus, Portugal, South Africa, Kuwait, Iran, and Colombia. Without falling into teacher-bashing mode, Stigler and Hiebert insist that reform efforts need to originate with teachers, not university researchers. They call for overhauling the teaching profession with stricter requirements, better peer review, and more demanding academic standards, as well as improved interaction between teachers. Their detailed examination of the study's video observations gets to the heart of the matter and should be worthwhile reading for educators, policymakers, and anyone interested in the condition of today's education system. --Jodi Mailander Farrell |
Average Customer Rating:   Thoughtful Analysis If you are looking for answers or quick "take aways" for your classroom - you won't find them in this book. But if you are interested in examining teaching methods through a new and different lens - then definitely pick up this book. There is enough information in other reviews that I don't feel the need to elaborate too much - but this book is a thoughtful examination of instructional methods and it will change the way you think about teaching. On the Ethnography of Instruction This book is an overview of a TIMSS (Trends in International Math and Science) study on teaching methodology in grade 8 math in particular, but also mathematics teaching in general. I picked it up because one of my children was having problems with math and I suspected (I believe correctly) that the real problem was how it was being taught.
The main focus was a 1999 survey of classrooms in the United States, Germany and Japan where interactions between teachers and students were video-graphed. Each nationality was shown to have distinctive cultural differences in the approach to teaching. No surprisingly the American approach showed the poorest results - American classrooms had the least amount of exploration and concentrated on having the students plug in formulae and memorize terminology in order to generate "student success". In terms of academic advancement they appeared to be at least a year behind students of the other two nations.
So what is the difference? Both the Japanese and Germans seem to devote a much higher amount of classroom time to semi-directed exploration by the students in groups. Rather than jazzing up the problem "to make it seem more relevant" the focus is how mathematical ideas relate to each other. Beyond that the book leaves the German example behind and concentrates on the Japanese model which has probably the best possible suggestion for improving education that I've ever come across - "kownaikenshu" is the term used, but in manufacturing it is called "kaizen" - continuous improvements. Teachers work on lessons together and, as part of the job, observe each other in groups in the classroom. In some of these scenarios there are more teacher observers in the classroom than there are students. Each type of problem is picked apart, kinds of student difficulties are cataloged and suggestions made on how to improve. And the class sizes are larger.
In contrast the American teacher is left on their own and to a large extent their approach to teaching is based on their own experiences as a student. It's not their fault - it's a structural and cultural problem.
My own background includes a minor in applied math and I was fortunate to have several relatives who encouraged me as a preteen to explore ideas in math and science. The first few years of my career was based on my ability to do statistics and relate to engineers, actuaries and medical researchers so I continue to believe that math (and science) education is an essential part of a liberal education that is much neglected in North America, probably at peril to our continued prosperity.
Overall an excellent book! What I missed was a deeper examination of the German approach. Towards the end it falls a bit flat as it resorts to a polemic exhorting people to push for change. It's worth trying for the long term but I'm not that hopeful for any immediate payback. The study results themselves are online at [...] are worth looking at.
Japanese vs. US in the classroom I picked up this book at a friend's house and gave it a quick read. It was interesting enough I thought I should review it. It is a little dry for my tastes, as it spends a lot of time talking about the experiment, what they looked at, etc., but the crux is this: They videotaped 8th grade math classes in Japan, Germany and the US to try to figure out how they taught math differently. The differences were intriguing.
There were two main points, and I will tell you because I am pretty sure you will never read this book. The first is that Japan, and Germany, to some extent, challenged their math students by giving them difficult problems to solve using the tools they had been taught. They often focus all of one class on the problem, or a series of problems leading up to that problem. In this way, they really got the kids thinking. This contrasts with the US style of demonstration of a rule and lots of practice with that rule. The Japanese method gets students thinking harder, and they are able to handle more difficult math problems sooner. I thought this was a great approach to math, and should be emulated. Japanese kids also rarely had homework.
Second major point was how teachers improved in Japan. I'm not sure what exactly the program is in the United States, but it was described in the book as researchers gather information and then pass it on to the teachers to have them implement in classrooms. In Japan, teachers and researchers work together to make lesson plans which are tested in student classrooms with real teachers. From what it sounds like, the faculty are very heavily involved in observing and formulating lesson plans.
This approach seems beneficial for two reasons: 1. Teachers observe other teachers in action and are able to learn from them (does this happen in the US? It doesn't seem like it), 2. melding the research and teaching together to form a whole unit involves the teachers more and makes it more likely successful changes in teaching will be implemented.
Some very decent thoughts about improving our schools. This is how it should be done. Why is American Schools being out performed by schools in other countries? It couldn't be the teaching methods taught in today's Teacher Prep colleges, could it? It is not a thick book. Read it and think. then read related materials.
Can it be done? It is being done, just not hear. This is a research book worth reading in an easy reading format. Do The Easy Things First! American middle-school and high-school pupils continually lag their peers in other developed countries - especially in mathematics - despite years of decreasing class size, building ornate new structures, "new" math, etc. However, these efforts are bound to fail if what goes on inside the classrooms is poorly structured.
The "bad news" is that we are often blind to the most familiar aspects of our everyday environment; the "good news" is that looking across cultures is one of the best ways to sharpen our view of ourselves. In "The Teaching Gap" the German and Japanese 8th-grade classes studied were comparable to the American classes - yet, substantive differences were noted.
Content in the U.S. was less advanced and presented in a more piecemeal and prescriptive way - there were twice the number of definitions presented in the U.S., and more concepts were simply given/stated vs. developed/derived. There was also more topic switching in the U.S., more interruptions (0% in Japan, 13% in Germany, and 31% in the U.S.), less coherence of U.S. lessons, less student involvement in doing the work (9% in the U.S., 19% in Germany, 40% in Japan).
Another difference is that Japanese teachers do not use overhead projectors - instead, they work their way around the room on chalkboards, leaving a record of the entire lesson for the pupils. Still another is that Japanese teachers focus on joint efforts at continuous improvement - a concept probably taken from Toyota's much vaunted "Toyota Production System."
"The Teaching Gap" concludes that most popular U.S. reform efforts have avoided a direct focus on teaching. The evidence presented within the book indicates that it is time we did. |  |
Select button not working? 
