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'Teaching Gap' exists among US and Asian Math Teachers |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Compared to math teachers in the high-achieving nations of Hong Kong and Japan, teachers in the United States offer less of certain supports that could help students learn more. The study analyzed how analogies -- a reasoning practice that involves connecting two concepts, often a better-known concept to a less familiar one -- are used in the United States, Hong Kong and Japan. They are known to be helpful for learning mathematical concepts, but only if teachers use enough imagery and gestures that students' attention to the analogous relations. "There is no guarantee that without these cues, the students are actually benefiting from the analogies and thinking about math in a comparative way," said Lindsey Richland, assistant professor of education and co-author of the study. Richland and research colleagues analyzed videotapes of math lessons from the large-scale video portion of the 1999 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. The "teaching gap" with respect to analogy could be attributed to different cultural orientations to relational reasoning. However, the authors conclude U.S. math teachers could improve the effectiveness of their analogies through slight adjustments in their instruction. News Radio: UCI maintains on campus an ISDN line for conducting interviews with its faculty and experts.
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