interesting book/study that is clearly written, easy to grasp, and very practical, Basically, the US education system might want to shift the focus from teachers to teaching, One key way this can happen is through lesson study a common practice in Japan that demands grade level teachers work as a small team each year to meticulously design, teach, revise, reteach, and publish a singleminute lesson.
Japan has made small incremental improvements over the years through "small" detailed teacherbased research/work, like lesson study that have resulted in quite progressive education systems.
The US, on the other hand, consistently opts for wide sweeping overhauls of reform every few years always driven by researchers, politicians, and anyone who isn't actually working with students in a classroom that have resulted in very little change in teaching since John Dewey's work in the earlys who, by the way, was working with real teachers in real classrooms improving real teaching.
Reading some of the negative reviews of this book and others like it geared towards improving teaching and teachers, it seems like teachers themselves would rather blame the system than work as a small team to begin improving their profession.
Teachers seem to want a magic trick just tell me what to think, say, and do in the classroom! to solve this issue.
This book makes a great case that teaching is a cultural activity that can't be magic tricked into change, It requires meticulously thoughtful work that is often slow and small, but over time teachers can change teaching, Instead of trying to become champion teachers, we should be working to improve teaching, Great teachers come and go, but teaching will always be a part of our society, I can't wait to start teaching this upcoming school year and work with my team of grade level teachers as we take steps to improve teaching.
Recently I ate lunch with a work friend who loves math, In fact, I think she's just moonlighting as a computer programmer until she can figure out how to do math full time, That morning she had pointed me to Vi Hart's amazing sitelinkmath doodle videos and, not surprisingly, we wound up talking about them and how they do a brilliant job of making math fun and interesting.
From there, our conversation touched on the various formative experiences the two of us had in learning about math as kids, our experiences with teaching or tutoring people in math, and the many woes of math education in the United States.
Somewhere during the course of the conversation I remembered this book, which I originally read more than ten years ago, I remembered i as being a fascinating comparison of how math is taught in the US, Germany, and Japan, and recommended it to my friend as a way to get a broader look at math education in the US, and at what other countries are doing differently and better.
My original plan was to bring the book to work the next day and give it to her, but when I pulled it off the bookshelf I started rereading.
So it took a bit longer to get it to her,
This foundation for this book is a comparison of math education in the US, Germany, and Japan, A group of researchers took a random sample of schools in each country and went into them and videotaped anth grade math class from each school.
By comparing what the saw in dozens of classes in each country, the researchers analyzed the differences in teaching styles between them,
The book starts with the actual research, describing sample classes from the three countries and then generalizing about the differences in lesson content and style between them.
Since the authors are academics, this section also includes information about their methodologyhow they tried to ensure that they videotaped a random set of classes, how they encoded the types of behavior and activity they saw in the videos, etc.
Personally, I found this interestingI like understanding how people in other fields do researchbut I can imagine that this could be pretty dry for other readers.
But that is only the first part of the book, and although it was, for me, the most interesting part, it is really just the groundwork for the authors' primary argument.
The authors describe the system of lesson study used in Japan, This is an ongoing process where each year teachers select a small number of topics to investigate, These may be very broad and abstract topics, such as, "How do we help students see both sides in an historical debate" or very narrow, such as, "How do we help students start to understand the concept of 'borrowing' in subtraction" The teachers meet regularly to discuss the topic, and typically prepare a new "lesson" which they try out in the classroom.
They then writeup their results as a way of sharing their ideas and experience with peer teachers,
The authors argue that by having the teachers involved in this ongoing introspection about what works and what doesn't work in the classroom, the teachers themselves become more invested in finding and using better methods of teaching, thus leading to a continuing improvement in the quality of education.
And they make a strong case for bringing something similar to American education, They identify some of the cultural and bureaucratic obstacles and suggest ways to overcome them,
As an engineer I was quite sympathetic to the argument in favor of lesson study, I, too, believe that the way you make any system better whether hardware, software, or people is to always be on the lookout for areas where there is room for improvement and then to figure out how to make them better.
What is particularly appealing is that this general approach does not preclude any of the other ideas that people have come up with for improving education.
It merely provides a vehicle for teachers to learn about them, reflect on what will work in their classroom, and discuss how to adapt ideas they believe in to their own lessons.
The afterword in this book is huge and could greatly impact one's understanding of its message, To improve education, we must not focus on teachers, but on teaching, and provide teachers with opportunities to collaboratively improve teaching, Successful teachers facilitate the recognition of relationships between topics, This book analyzes notable differences between systems of teaching in Germany, Japan, and the United States, without being judgmental about which is "better".
Perhaps the most interesting and relevant feature of the book is the analysis of the available tools for reform available to Japanese and American educators.
Compared to some books on education, this book is much less theoretical, and actually concludes with some practical suggestions about steps that might lead to substantial vs.
superficial changes to the way we teach, Really interesting book which focuses on the importance of improving teaching through lesson study, thus focusing on what actually works in the classroom and what students respond to.
We tend to focus on teachers, their knowledge of their subject matter which is very important but not so much on how they get students to learn.
Since this book was written in, it makes me wonder what impact the The Teaching Gap's findings have had on teaching today, The book is fairly short and easy to read, and I wish more books like this existed publicizing the results of large, international research studies.
While I did not learn a ton from it but did appreciate the rare chance to 'observe' an international classroom, not just as someone's high level interpretation, but grounded in the actual observations, and it was less dense and more "lots of clear background to make sure we are all on the same page" not in a bad way I find this laying out of assumptions helpful especially when talking about something many people have opinions on or take for granted, I thought it was a simple idea well communicated, had some interesting examples, and is a type of book I'd like to see more of.
My only real gripe is the misleading title, as it was really more a case study of Japanese teaching with one real suggestion for the American education system dissolve the teacher/researcher gap but said with more nuance.
I found very little to disagree with in the book, It was all stated well enough that it seems to make most sense to just quote large passages of it below, I wondered whether it would be outdated by decades, but no, so little has actually change especially with mathematics, still, It is this way because “teaching is not a simple skill but rather a complex cultural activity that is highly determined by beliefs and habits that work partly outside the realm of consciousness.
That teaching is largely a cultural activity helps to explain why, in the face of constant reform, so little has actually changed inside U.
S. classrooms”
Even when I learn about something and want to implement it in my classroom, it won't do much:
“when one of us was working with a group of American teachers studying videotapes of Japanese mathematics instruction.
After viewing the Japanese lessons, a fourthgrade teacher decided to shift from his traditional approach to a more problemsolving approach such as we had seen on the videotapes.
Instead of asking shortanswer questions as he regularly did, he began his next lesson by presenting a problem and asking students to spend ten minutes working on a solution.
Although the teacher changed his behavior to correspond with the actions of the teacher in the videotape, the students, not having seen the video or reflected upon their own participation, failed to respond as the students on the tape did.
They played their traditional roles, They waited to be shown how to solve the problem, The lesson did not succeed, The students are part of the system, ” Indeed, I have tried, and was discouraged with the results and stopped, Students actively give me feedback to help them with their confusions more, and do what is clear and good for short term gains consistent with the types that I have seen.
And it is even harder to do so embedded in a curriculum / system of other teachers that will give the same test,
Reform rarely works as intended:
“Teachers can misinterpret reform and change surface featuresfor example, they include more group work use more manipulatives, calculators, and realworld problem scenarios or include writing in the lessonbut fail to alter their basic approach to teaching mathematics.
” I see a lot of this
I can not imagine this below level of thought going into a lesson planned with my colleagues, though it is the type of thinking I do somewhat when I have time I do not have the time or ability or motivation to think at this level by myself.
This example illustrates teachers planning a lesson about subtraction with borrowing, and what they thought about for one problem:
“Not long ago, the VicePrincipal Ms.
Furumoto showed me several textbooks, All of those textbooks usedandi, e. ,andand. What most of the textbooks said was, they started out by introducing the SubtractionAddition Method Genkahoo, In the case of, first subtract the nine from ten, then add what is left over in the Is position which isto the number.
I thought if you narrow it down like that introducing subtraction with borrowing by teaching the SubtractionAddition Method, its not very interesting, So on Saturday I suggested using, or, I thought that these are a little harder thanand, Using these numbers will bring out a lot more ideas or ways to solve the problem, But after reading a lot of different books on the subject, because kids can conceptualize in their heads about up to the numberat this age, I thought we should go with numbers like.
“The teachers agreed that the choice of numbers would influence which strategies the students would try when solving the problem, But they had other concerns as well, For example, one teacher wanted to use, because one of her students, who was a low achiever, happened to have seven family members.
Everyone agreed that this was a good idea, They also liked the numberbecause, since none of the students had fewer than three people in their families, subtracting the number of family members fromwould involve decomposing ten, which was, of course, the point of the lesson.
They briefly considered the numberinstead of, but decided against it”
I wondered this to myself when I started teaching:
“Each day, vast numbers of U.
S. teachers
solve problems, try new approaches, and develop their own knowledge of what works and what doesnt work in their own classrooms, Yet we have no way to harvest what even the most brilliant teachers have learned, no way to share that knowledge and use it to advance the professional knowledge base of teaching.
U. S. teachers work alone, for the most part, and when they retire, all that they have learned is lost to the profession, Each new generation of teachers must start from scratch, finding its own way, ” Though it is not quite that bad today, it is still a clear problem to me sites like Teachers Pay Teachers and such are ultimately a lot of busy work too, or worksheets that don't make sense outside the context they were designed
I'm surprised when students are surprised that I make my own slides.
I have to if I am not involved in that design process, I don't have a strong why for the lesson flow and what I am trying to convey today.
I am often dissatisfied with the existing curricula because the flow of ideas doesn't make enough sense, embedded in what we have done yesterday and the week before and so on.
The book setsgoals to be successful in becoming like the Japanese system
build consensus for continuous improvement
This somewhat exists.
Instead of going by leaps and bounds and legislation and reworking the whole thing, we should improve what we have,
set clear learning goals and align assessments to them
I think this was largely done between when this book was published and now.
There is so much focus on this, I think it's a good thing, that can go a little far, but probably an improvement,
Restructure schools as places where teachers can learn
Definitely not, that I have seen, I could go on about that for a while, but no, I don't feel like this is true,
Also, “Lesson study the revision of lessons is, at its core, a teacher activity, Teachers must make it work, True, it is impossible for teachers to initiate and sustain a vigorous program of lesson study without the active support of the school board, superintendent, principal, and parents.
But the success of the activity ultimately depends on teachers, ” I don't see a lot by percentage of teachers as interested in doing this by default, I do know teachers who do, and have found my physics colleagues really wonderful at this, and it's just so much better, But as the book suggests, most firstthought remedies: giving more time, more money, etc, are not useful alone.
The book is NOT about a certain way or style of teaching, but what it should mean to be a teacher.
In their words, “a profession is created not by certificates and censures but by the existence of a substantive body of professional knowledge, as well as a mechanism for improving it, and by the genuine desire of the professions members to improve their practice”.
Acquire The Teaching Gap: Best Ideas From The Worlds Teachers For Improving Education In The Classroom Presented By James W. Stigler Issued As Textbook
James W. Stigler