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"Lessons in Perspective: How Culture Shapes Math Instruction in Japan, Germany and the United States," (PDF format) is an accessible and thought-provoking 18-page report, produced in connection with a May 1997 seminar sponsored by the California State University Institute for School Reform.

The report summarizes a conversation among a group of California educators and policymakers and Dr. James Stigler of UCLA, who surveyed math teaching techniques in Japan, Germany, and the United States as part of the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS). Dr. Stigler's videotapes of math lessons in the three countries sparked the conversation.

Dr. Stigler contends that teaching habits grow out of cultural beliefs and expectations and are difficult to change. Although he does not pass judgment on each country's approach to teaching, he suggests that Americans have much to learn from the Japanese about teaching science and math -- not so much about specific techniques, he says, but about applying the Japanese philosophy of "continuous improvement" to the art and craft of teaching. His comments would seem to apply to other subject areas as well.

Here are some excerpts from the report:

-- "The Japanese lesson is like a church service; the U.S. lesson is more like a trip to the supermarket."

-- "What the United States lacks is a mechanism for learning from our experience in the classroom....

-- "(T)he one thing (American) teachers never do in...groups is work on designing, teaching and jointly critiquing a lesson."

-- "Teachers in Japan believe students aren't supposed to follow everything all the time; they expect students to daydream some of the time. So they design a lesson structure that allows students to daydream and then come back into focus a few minutes later with an entire visual record of the lesson in front of them that will allow them to get back into the flow."

-- "People used to think Japanese teachers must drill-drill-drill all the time in the classroom. But they don't.We do."

-- "German and American teachers saw the primary goal of the lesson as teaching their students how to solve problems. The Japanese teachers saw the primary goal as teaching their students math concepts, what they mean and how to think about math in general."

-- "(P)aradoxically, a lot of the teaching techniques that the Japanese have developed work especially well in highly diverse classrooms (i.e., ones where students have a broad range of academic skill), and the techniques that American teachers have developed work especially well in homogeneous classrooms. You might expect it to be the opposite; we're a very diverse society, so we ought to be the specialists in how to teach in diverse classrooms.... In Japan, they do no tracking at all before the tenth grade."

-- "The American lesson plans always say what the teacher is going to do. The Japanese plans ask what the students are going to think if the teacher does this."

-- "The essence of the Japanese approach to improving teaching is 'lesson study.' Lesson study is school- and subject-matter-based. Teachers at a school will choose a specific topic...and may work on that theme for three years, meeting every week in their lesson study group."

-- "I don't think there's a single American teacher who believes that by participating in training they're going to improve the profession's collective knowledge about teaching. In Japan, virtually every young teacher involved in the process of lesson study believes that they're contributing to the step-by-step, gradual improvement of teaching. The American approach, in which we identify how we think teachers should be teaching and then push them to teach that way, causes a pendulum-swing effect as we push everyone one way, and then student achievement doesn't go up, and we 'reform' off in the other direction again."

-- "Teachers here want smaller class sizes in part because we want every child to have a chance to participate in class. Japanese teachers don't understand this point of view at all; they believe participation isn't saying something in class, it's having your brain engaged in the problem at hand."

-- "The key to improving teaching (in America) is to ask the question over and over: 'Can you think of a way to make students learn more?' If we had two and a half million teachers making tiny little discoveries that improve their own teaching -- and then had a system for sharing them with other teachers, gradually, you would see change."


The entire report is available on-line in PDF format.

Although it's not necessary to view Dr. Stigler's videos to follow his discussion, a free copy of a TIMSS video, which contains an abbreviated geometry and algebra lesson from each of the three countries, is available on tape or CD.