Instructional Quality of Japanese and US Student Teaching Lessons

Overview

The interest by mathematics educators in Japan has been due not only their students’ consistent high achievement on international exams but also the documented high quality of their mathematics instruction (Hiebert et al.,2003; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). In an effort to understand how it is that Japanese teachers develop their teaching skills and mathematical knowledge to support their instruction researchers have studied aspects of their training. These include Japanese lesson study professional development  (Lewis, 2002; Fernandez et al., 2001; Lewis; 2000), their student teaching process (Peterson, 2005), their conceptions about high-quality instruction (Corey et al., 2010; Jacobs & Morita, 2002), and curriculum (Takahashi et al., 2006).  This study builds on these attempts to better understand the training of teachers in Japan and how the differences emerge in the quality of mathematics instruction between Japanese and US teachers. We compare measures of instructional quality of middle school student teachers in Japan and in the US. The US student teachers were specially placed in situations to better replicate the typical situations (explained below) that Japanese student teachers experience.

Educational Importance

This can help US mathematics educators know how our students compare near the end of our mathematics education program.  It can also help us to better understand if the rift in instructional quality between the two countries. Greater differences in in-service teachers would suggest that the opportunities for US teachers to continue their opportunity to improve their teaching, and learning of teaching, is a greater contributing factor to US teaching quality.  Our measures of instructional quality are multi dimensional and fairly fine grained so that aspects of instruction can be compared to see where the strengths and weaknesses can be found in the novice instruction in each country. Although our numbers are small and limit generalizations the findings do add to our understanding of instruction and teacher training in both countries.

Conceptual Framework

We view instruction as the interaction between students and teacher around content within various contexts. This view is often called the instructional triangle (Cohen, Raudenbush, & Ball, 2003). In this study we focus on the interactions around the classroom mathematics so our measure of instructional quality is focused on the mathematical quality of the interactions. Since this study also studies instruction from two different world and classroom cultures we consider the socio-cultural scripts and influences on the instruction and the instructors (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999).

Method

Eight lessons taught by a total of three Japanese student teachers and sixteen lessons taught by a total of four US student teachers were carefully analyzed for differences in mathematical quality. The US student teachers were from a large private university in the intermountain west.  They were placed in situations and asked to complete assignments that was more like that which the Japanese  student teachers experienced. In both countries the student teachers were assigned to schools and teachers with other student teachers so that they could observe each other and work together. Seven student teachers worked with three teachers in Japan, but in the US student teachers were assigned in pairs to a single cooperating teacher. All student teachers taught one lesson each week, for the US student teachers this happened in the first four weeks of student teaching. The two cooperating teachers in the US had either won or had been a finalist for the presidential teaching award for secondary mathematics in their state. We realize these are not typical US student teacher placements. In some way these are ideal, or somewhat idealized, placements.  However, to try to get an accurate comparison to the Japanese student teachers, which were all placed with expert teachers that worked at a school associated with a good university,  we felt such placements were comparable.

  The mathematical quality of the lesson was assessed along about twenty dimensions of instruction by using the Mathematical Quality Instrument (Hill et al., 2008).  Because even trained researchers have only moderately high inter-rater reliability on the MQI (ours ranged from .65 to .82 between the four coders)  each lesson in the study was coded by two researchers to ensure reliable coding of videos.  Other aspects of instruction that were noticed by the coders were also explored if they were not captured well by the MQI coding. Some of these phenomena had to do with questioning practices or what was socially or culturally acceptable in the classrooms of the two countries.

Results and Discussion

Although the analysis of the coding is still underway a few themes and interesting findings have emerged.  We highlight a few below.

• The Japanese student teachers and US student teachers had very similar overall instructional quality.
• Some of the weaknesses that the MQI revealed in the US instruction were shared by the Japanese suggesting that some aspects of teaching are difficult across cultures.
• Each country showed strengths and weaknesses not shared by the other country.
• A preliminary analysis of student teachers’ ability to question and respond to students showed that the Japanese teachers were on average better than the US student teachers but the best student teacher, by far, at questioning students and responding to students answers and comments  was a US student teacher.

These findings so far suggest that put in similar situations with high-quality cooperating teachers with time to focus on preparing and implementing a good lesson that US student teachers can perform comparably to their Japanese counter parts in similar situations. Although there were aspects of the lessons that were rated higher for the Japanese there were also unpolished and weak aspects of their instruction that were similar to or worse than the US teachers.

References

Cohen, D., Raudenbush, S., & Ball, D. (2003).  Resources, instruction, and research. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25(2), 1-24.

 Corey, D. L., Peterson, B. E., Lewis, B. M., & Bukarau, J. (2010). Are there any places that students use their heads? Principles of high-quality Japanese mathematics instruction. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 41, 438-478.

Fernandez, C., Chokshi, S., Cannon, J., & Yoshida, M. (2001). Learning about lesson study in the United States. In M. Beauchamp (Ed.), New and old voices on Japanese education. Amonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Hiebert, J., Gallimore, R., Garnier, H., Givving, K. B., Hollingsworth, H., Jacobs, J., et al. (2003). Teaching mathematics in seven countries: Results from the TIMSS 1999 video study, NCES (2003-013), U. S. Department of Education. Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.

Hill, H. C., Blunk, M., Charalambous, C., Lewis, J., Phelps, G., Sleep, L., and Ball, D.L.(2008). Mathematical knowledge for teaching and the mathematical quality of instruction: An exploratory study. Cognition and Instruction 26 (4): 430–511.

Jacobs, J. & Morita, E. (2002) Japanese and American teachers’ evaluations of videotaped mathematics lessons. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 33 (3), 154-175.

Lewis, C. (2000). Lesson study: The core of Japanese professional development. Special invited address to the Special Interest Group for Research in Mathematics Education. Presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA.

Lewis, C.C. (2002). Lesson study: a handbook of teacher-led instructional change. Philidelphia: Research for Better Schools. 

Peterson, B. E. (2005). Student teaching in Japan: The lesson. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 8(1), 61–74.

Stigler, J., & Hiebert, J. (1999). The teaching gap: Best ideas from the world’s teachers for improving education in the classroom. New York: Free Press.

Takahashi, A., Watanabe, T., & Yoshida, M. (2006). Lower secondary school teaching guide for the Japanese course of study: Mathematics (grades 7-9). Madison, NJ: Global Education Resources.