A Cross-Cultural Study of Teachers' Instructional Practices in Singapore and the United States

Abstract

this cross-cultural study, utilizing a structured instructional behavior rating form, examined distinguishing and comparable teaching practices in secondary gifted classrooms in Singapore and the United States. teachers from Singapore (n = 67) and teachers from the United States (n = 33) in 5 subject domains including math, science, English, social studies, and second language were observed. the study showed that Singapore teachers demonstrated a higher level of effectiveness than american teachers in both general teacher behaviors and differentiation strategies. the level of instructional effectiveness appeared to be positively related to the number of years of teaching experience and training in differentiation practices for the gifted.

Teaching for conceptual understanding: A cross-national comparison of the relationship between teachers’ instructional practices and student achievement in mathematics

“…The descriptive results presented here support the findings from previous studies, including classroom observation studies, that there is variability across countries in teachers' use of instructional practices for supporting conceptual understanding (Hiebert et al, 2005;VanTassel-Baska et al, 2008;Whitman and Lai, 1990). Focusing on how the U.S. compares to the other countries, it appeared that teachers in the U.S. were most similar to Korean teachers in the frequency of their reported practices, and that they reported using some of the practices at least as frequently, or more frequently than teachers in the other countries.…”

“…These patterns across the four countries support the findings from classroom observation studies (Hiebert et al, 2005;VanTassel-Baska et al, 2008;Whitman and Lai, 1990) that there is variability in teachers' use of the instructional practices measured on the TIMSS teacher survey across countries.…”

“…This finding is supported by the 1999 TIMSS video study, which collected classroom observations from randomly selected classrooms in six high-performing countries and the U.S., and reported that teachers in U.S. classrooms spent more time completing repetitive exercises rather than applying and extending skills to new, different problems; reviewed previously taught procedures and material more frequently; covered less advanced content; covered a scattered mix of skills and concepts rather than a single coherent topic; and suffered more interruptions to the lesson (Hiebert et al, 2005). Researchers have also found that teachers in Japan (Whitman and Lai, 1990) and Singapore (VanTassel-Baska et al, 2008) focused more on critical thinking and lesson structure, when compared to U.S. teachers who focused more on discipline and rules. Japanese teachers also reported a more unified view of what constitutes "good" mathematics instruction than their American counterparts (Jacobs and Morita, 2002).…”

Measuring teaching quality and student engagement in South Korea and The Netherlands

“…This was established, paving the way to a first cautious comparison. Even though our study differs in terms of sample size and measurement instruments, our findings are in line with the scant evidence found in international comparative studies (Stigler et al, 1999;Van Tassel-Baska et al, 2008), showing higher levels of higher order teaching skills of East Asian teachers.…”

“…In a small-scale cross-cultural study of gifted students in Singapore and the United States, differences in instructional practices were found between teachers of the two countries (Van Tassel-Baska et al, 2008). The observers rated teachers' curriculum planning and delivery, accommodation for individual differences, problem-solving strategies, critical-thinking strategies, creativethinking strategies, and research strategies.…”