Alan Siegel
2001
The outstanding performance of Japanese students on the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) examinations has prompted numerous studies of Japanese teaching practices by researchers eager to duplicate such success in their own countries' classrooms. Now N.Y.U. professor Alan Siegel has taken a look at videotaped lessons from TIMSS classroom studies in an effort to spot the salient features of Japanese teaching. Siegel walks the reader through sample Japanese geometry and algebra lessons full of "deep and rich" content, noting the teachers' skill at eliciting and prompting responses from students. Instead of extensive group work and "discovery-based learning," which have taken hold in many U.S. schools, he says the "grapple and tell" method is extensively used in Japan. Here, students struggle with a problem in class-individually or in small groups-often without finding a solution. Then, a master teacher presents "every step of [the] solution without divulging the answer," thereby helping students to "learn to think deeply." Siegel also rebuts some misleading claims by other studies of Japanese pedagogy, such as the assertion that Japanese teachers "come closer to implementing the spirit of current ideas advanced by U.S. reformers than do U.S. teachers." You can access the study online at http://www.cs.nyu.edu/faculty/siegel/ST11.pdf
