The Teaching Gap

3.5 stars out of 5.

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.