Book Club: The Teaching Gap

As part of my role as Curriculum Coordinator, I have been striving to implement more "grassroots professional development." One of the opportunities I created was a book club. We are currently reading 'The Teaching Gap". It's an enlightening book that uses case studies of middle school mathematics classrooms to highlight the differences between the teaching methods used in the US, Germany and Japan. It has been really interesting to have discussions with teachers across disciplines about the messages in the reading. So much of what happens in a math classroom can be extended to other types of classrooms and we sometimes forget how similar (for better or for worse) our teaching styles are, regardless of the content we are teaching. I'll probably write a commentary and review of the book at a later time. There are some really amazing suggestions for REAL grassroots professional development that can be implemented in schools for us to enrich our teaching practice and continue growing. This idea is so interesting to me that I'd like to devote a whole post to it. For now, I thought I'd share the discussion questions that I've been using to guide our conversations about each chapter.

Guiding Questions for “The Teaching Gap “

Introduction and Chapter 1:

• What do you think needs to change in order for teachers to improve their practice?

• What was the last thing you did to improve your teaching?

• How has teaching changed over time? How different is the way that you teach from the way you were taught?

• What do you believe is the distinctly “american way” of teaching that is referred to in the text?

Chapter 2:

• Do you think we’ll be able to learn about teaching patterns in general from this case study of 8th grade math classes?

Chapter 3:

• What patterns do you see arising in each of the three countries?

• What patterns do you think remain true across disciplines?

• One of the claims is that in the US teachers do a lot more hand-holding of students. This hit close to home for me...How about for all of you?

Chapter 4:

• The themes they studied in this chapter were: Rigor, Coherence/flow, Student engagement

• What are your opinions about each of these? How would you rate yourself/Wasatch in each of these categories?

• Are we leaving anything important out by focusing on these three?

Chapter 5:

• What pattern resonates with you?

• German Pattern: Review, Present a problem, Develop procedures, Practice

• Japanese Pattern: Review, Present a problem, Students work, Discuss, Highlight and summarize

• US Pattern: Review , Demonstrate solution, Practice, Correct

• What does “Teaching is a System” mean in your class?

• The chapter closes asking about where these patterns come from. Where did you learn your teaching “pattern”?

Chapter 6:

• The definition given for a cultural activity is: “Generalized knowledge housed in the brains of participants, learned implicitly through observation and participation...It is something one learns to do more by growing up in a culture than by studying it formally.” Do you believe teaching is a cultural activity?

• In what ways do you break the cultural script of teaching? Does it help or hurt?

• The teaching script involves: core beliefs about the nature of the subject, about how students learn and about the role the teacher should play in the classroom. What do you believe about each of these elements? How do they dictate what happens in your class on a given day?

• The authors say that teachers in the US view confusion as a bad thing. This hit home for me. I understand the value of grappling but it is SO HARD to get students to do it. Thoughts?

• Page 92 “US teachers take responsibility for keeping students engaged.”

• Do you see individual difference more as a barrier or as a resource? What would it take in your class to employ the Japanese way of thinking about difference?

• “If one feature is changed, the system will rush in to ‘repair the damage’” (97). This reminds me of our PD with Jaimie Cloud: Treat the problem, not the symptoms. What is the real problem?

• Can our school change even if the nationwide culture doesn’t?

Chapter 7:

• What’s the best PD you’ve ever received. What’s the worst? Why?

• Wasatch might be well positioned for lesson study, what issue would you pick (either from your own standards or from a systemic issue that you see students having?) I might pick the broad issue of providing students with a safe space to grapple and make mistakes, teach them to be comfortable without hand holding.

Chapter 8

• Are we moving too fast?

• Are school wide initiatives the way to reform Wasatch or are they too big/ not contextualized?

• Board of trustees must help develop the initiatives (page 138). We must convince them that slow gradual improvement is the way to go.

• Initiative 2 is done! Clear standards and aligned assessments

Chapter 9

• At our school we might consider doing project study instead of lesson study for some teachers.

• What changes do you think we need in order to provide more collaborative work time for teachers?