Comparing math teaching practices in Japan and Germany with those
in the United States, two leading researchers offer a surprising
new view of teaching and a bold action plan for improving education
inside the American classroom.
For years our schools and children have lagged behind
international standards in reading, arithmetic, and most other
areas of academic achievement. It is no secret that American
schools are in dire need of improvement, and that education has
become our nation's number-one priority. But even though almost
every state in the country is working to develop higher standards
for what students should be learning, along with the means for
assessing their progress, the quick-fix solutions implemented so
far haven't had a noticeable impact.
The problem, as James Stigler and James Hiebert explain, is that
most efforts to improve education fail because they simply don't
have any impact on the quality of teaching inside classrooms.
Teaching, they argue, is cultural. American teachers aren't
incompetent, but the methods they use are severely limited, and
American teaching has no system in place for getting better. It is
teaching, not teachers, that must be changed.
In "The Teaching Gap, " the authors draw on the conclusions of
the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) -- an
innovative new study of teaching in several cultures -- to refocus
educational reform efforts. Using videotaped lessons from dozens of
randomly selected eighth-grade classrooms in the United States,
Japan, and Germany, the authors reveal the rich, yet unfulfilled
promise of American teaching and document exactly how other
countries have consistently stayed ahead of us in the rate their
children learn. Our schools can be restructured as places where
teachers can engage in career-long learning and classrooms can
become laboratories for developing new, teaching-centered ideas. If
provided the time they need during the school day for collaborative
lesson study and plan building, teachers "will" change the way our
students learn.
James Stigler and James Hiebert have given us nothing less than
a "best practices" for teachers -- one that offers proof that how
teachers teach is far more important than increased spending,
state-of-the-art facilities, mandatory homework, or special
education -- and a plan for change that educators, teachers, and
parents can implement together.
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