Are US Teachers Implementing Reform?

A great deal of effort has been put into the reform of mathematics teaching in the US in recent years. Numerous documents - examples include the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Curriculum and Evaluation Standards, and the NCTM Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics - encourage teachers to change the way they teach, and point to some features of preferred instruction.

Although many of the current ideas stated in such documents are not defined specifically in such a way that they could be directly coded, it is possible to view some of the indicators developed in the video study in conjunction with these current ideas. When the video data are viewed in this way, there are some respects in which Japanese lessons came closer to implementing the spirit of current ideas advanced by American reformers than did American lessons. For example, Japanese students were asked to solve problems, generate alternative solution methods, and explain their thinking more often than American students. On the other hand, there were other ways in which Japanese lessons departed from current reform recommendations: For example, Japanese lessons emphasized abstract, symbolic problems more than real-world hands-on problems, and almost never used calculators. Thus, Japanese lessons follow a distinct pattern that cannot be labelled as either traditional or reform-minded in the American sense.

What did US teachers say about reform? Look at the next page...

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