The maths education airwaves here are busy with comments about the visiting Shanghai teachers, Singaporean text books, and the notion of ‘mastery’, a term which is being bandied about without any real clarification of what it means or looks like in practice. Shanghai and Singapore are both up there in the international league tables so it’s natural England should be looking to them to see what we can learn, - but so too is Japan and it’s perhaps strange that not that much is mentioned here about their take on maths education.
So it was with a great deal of interest that I joined colleagues for a study visit of Japanese schools. Our hosts were the Tokyo Gakugei University – a higher education institution devoted to all aspects of teacher education. We visited seven classrooms and participated in two public ‘lesson studies’ as well as meeting with Ministerial colleagues responsible for all things mathematical. And I think there are some interesting observations to make. (Pictured left, glorious autumn colour in Kyoto)
The classroom ethos
All the teachers had warm relationships with their students. The formal lesson began with getting out books, a straightening of desks and mutual bowing, and finished the same way. Students stood when they addressed the class. The progress through the lesson was recorded by the teacher in chalk on a magnetic green board which stretched the width of the classroom and was curved at both ends enabling everyone to see everything. Lines were drawn with rulers and presentation seemed to be important. Magnetic names were used to annotate records of student’s ideas so that the class could refer to Hiroko’s method, for example. This recording offered students the opportunity to remind themselves independently of how arguments and conclusions had been built up over the lesson and I contrasted this with the powerpoint experience of many students in English classrooms which leaves no trace to follow.
Textbooks
The lessons were adapted from the teacher’s text book – there are six kite marked schemes in Japan. Students had their own text books but we didn’t see any of them being used. It was very evident that all of the teachers we saw really knew their stuff. They were fluent in moving between representations, interpreting what students said, and making links across and within the topics. Once students were working independently, teachers moved around the room noting interesting responses and used those as the springboard to the discussions which took up the majority of the lesson time. The emphasis of the discussions was to probe understanding through working from specifics to generalities. (Book pictured right, even the Samurai had to master calculating volume)
Lesson study is the main form of professional development in the Japanese system. The Ministry suggest areas for research and these are cascaded down through the prefecture to school level. One current emphasis is on working out how to help students become independent thinkers rather than being focused on passing examinations, for example. Groups of subject teachers focus on an aspect of their teaching which fits with the research question of the school as a whole. They research the background to the topic or concept then come together to plan the redesign of an existing lesson; this may take several meetings. One teacher then teaches the lesson and the others in the group, plus an invited audience including outside experts from a teacher education background, observe. After this there is a lengthy post-lesson discussion involving everyone – this is formal, and begins with the teacher’s reflection. The design team are quizzed about the changes they made and an overall high level summary is given by the outside expert. I was surprised by the forthright nature of some of the comments, however these were often followed by ‘ but you are still learning so you will do better next time’…. for teachers are considered novices for at least the first five years of their careers and the emphasis is on improving understanding and practice.
The teaching profession
Teachers are appraised often and sometimes publicly, and are ranked according to their teaching ability, not how well their students perform on tests. They are regarded as an integral part of the improvement process as their research findings from lesson study feed back via the local prefecture into the curriculum reviews and revisions to text books– which happen every ten years. There is no problem with teacher supply. (Pictured left, pavement maths...)
I really enjoyed my visit to Japan. I’m sure there are many issues that were not shared with us and of course we saw teachers who were happy to be observed. But there was something about the professionalisation of teachers there that I think we’re missing in the UK - whether it’s their knowledge base, the sense of growing into a role, or the respect and collegiality they are afforded by those who determine national policy.
Lynne McClure
Director, Cambridge Mathematics