教师培训课件：从国际比较的角度看东西方数学教育的差异.ppt

In looking at what differentiates education systems in countries whose students do better than ours, some things stand out. We are one of very few countries without a nationally defined curriculum. There is not a common understanding of what students should know and be able to do. In a mobile society, children can end up with gaps in their knowledge. It is particularly interesting that in countries such as France, Singapore and Hungary, while the needs of individual children are valued and respected, there is an overriding goal that encompasses what a nation’s students need in common. There is attention to the national agenda, identity, culture. While at grade 4 we studied what most of the world does, our 8th grade math content was less rigorous than most countries; Tied to this is the absence of incentives for students to study hard and achieve well. In some places, efforts are being made to address this issue. Some states are working on high school exit exams. Few have yet established a rigorous standard. In the videotape study, about one in three U.S. classes was interrupted, an event that NEVER occurred in Japan. This speaks to how learning is valued in Japan. Some will say that this is a difference in culture and we can’t expect that here. It is, however, our challenge to figure out how to make the valuing of education the culture here instead of dismissing that idea as impossible. Further, when they enter the profession, U.S. teachers do not get the support that some worldwide colleagues do that allows them to learn from excellent teachers. Experienced teachers also have little opportunity to talk with colleagues about instruction in the interest of better achievement. When the TIMSS Videotape Classroom Study convened a group of mathematicians to assess the level of mathematical content in delivered instruction, they focused their attention on the lesson elements listed here. Not all the statistics from this study have been fine-tuned yet. But the