Teaching is Cultural

           This week left me with a similar question as the previous weeks, what is the best way to teach mathematics? This week we learned about the differences between American schools and Japanese schools.  One of the biggest differences that I found between the two was the in the US confusion and making mistakes in mathematics is thought of as a bad thing, but in Japan confusion and making mistakes is thought of as a good thing because this allows students to learn from their mistakes. This is something that I have mentioned in my previous blogs and something I strongly believe, making mistakes is very important especially in math as long as you find out why you have made these mistakes and how to prevent making them when approaching a similar problem. Since teaching is a cultural thing I think that this is a difficult concept for teachers and students to accept, that confusion and mistakes are okay, especially in mathematics.

            Teaching is cultural and teachers often resort back to teaching in the way in which they learned the best when they were a student. Everyone knows how to teach that went to school, it is learned through the culture. Most people have not studied to be teachers but most people have been students in which they have observed for years how teachers teach them. People within a culture share a mental picture of what teaching is like. In a North American mathematics classroom I believe this picture is often of a teacher standing at the front of a classroom teaching a lesson and then providing students with questions to complete on their own followed by a test at the end of a unit. I do believe and/or hope this is beginning to change as students start to become more in control of their own learning and the notion of student centered learning is becoming more popular. This was another characteristic of the Japanese schools that was different from America’s. In Japan teachers would give students problems and allow them to think about it on their own before giving solutions. This allowed for a lot more classroom discussion, creativity and higher-order thinking.

            Giving students time to explore and attempt to solve complex problems will allow them to use this creativity and high-order thinking. Giving them the opportunity to then share and discuss their findings with classmates really allows students to be at the center of the classroom and learn from each other. The teacher can then use their students’ production of work as resources for their teaching and base further lessons on this work. For example in class we discussed the painted cube problem. In partners everyone came up with a solution to the problem and put it onto large chart paper. When these pieces of chart paper were displayed at the end of class, every groups was different. If this was done in a mathematics class in elementary school or high school, the teacher could then make lessons on each of the different methods used to solve the problem. This would allow students to be at the center of their learning, their work to be used as resources and students could see first hand that there is multiple ways to approach a problem. I believe that the Japanese schools have many effective teaching strategies that they use in the classroom and North American schools are definitely starting to bring in some of these strategies. In the pre-service teaching program I have definitely heard about these strategies multiple times, but are teachers who have been teaching for several years open to changing any of their strategies from what they have learned and have been practicing? Will the cultural picture of what teaching looks like every change in Canada?

picture one from:http://www.tidesinc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/1069986-Clipart-Diverse-Stick-Students-Working-On-A-Group-Project-Royalty-Free-Vector-Illustration.jpg
picture two from: https://teachingmathculture.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/part1.jpg