Closing the Teaching Gap

Abstract

Although the policy context that surrounds education changes like a series of hurricanes blowing across the Gulf of Mexico, the substantive nature of what happens in classrooms stays pretty much the same. In fact, this is what we would have predicted if teaching is a cultural activity, and after years of studying teaching here and elsewhere, we are convinced, more than ever, that it is. Our book, The Teaching Gap, which was published in 1999, was primarily a report covering a large research project, the TIMSS 1995 Video Study, which looked at mathematics teaching in three countries: Germany, Japan, and the United States. We followed that publication by embarking on a new study, this time in seven countries-the United States and six high-performing countries. The most important things we have learned since we wrote The Teaching Gap revolve around the fact that, just as teaching is a cultural activity and difficult to change, teacher learning is also a cultural activity and thus subject to many of the same forces that keep traditional teaching practices in place. PUSHING THE RESEARCH FORWARD If you were impressed by the methods of teaching used in Japan (described in The Teaching Gap), you are not alone: Readers, especially those from the United States, find the Japanese pattern of teaching both foreign and intriguing at the same time. And, the more mathematically sophisticated the readers, the more struck they are by the elegance with which Japanese teachers engage their students in doing important mathematical work, work that focuses on core mathematical ideas and their applications. That we concluded Japan's method of teaching Closing the Teaching Gap The hard work of improving teaching in the United States can't succeed without changes in the culture of teacher learning.

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