The Videotape Classroom Study had four goals:

• To provide a rich source of information regarding what goes on inside eighth-grade mathematics classes in the three countries;
• To develop objective observational measures of classroom instruction to serve as quantitative indicators, at a national level, of teaching practices in the three countries;
• To compare actual mathematics teaching methods in the US and the other countries with those recommended in current reform documents and with teachers’ perceptions of those recommendations;
• To assess the feasibility of applying videotape methodology in future wider-scale national and international surveys of classroom instructional practices.