James W. Stigler

A Knowledge Base for the Teaching Profession: What Would It Look Like and How Can We Get One?:

To improve classroom teaching in a steady, lasting way, the teaching profession needs a knowledge base that grows and improves. In spite of the continuing efforts of researchers, archived research knowledge has had little effect on the improvement of practice in the average classroom. We explore the possibility of building a useful knowledge base for teaching by beginning with practitioners’ knowledge. We outline key features of this knowledge and identify the requirements for this knowledge to be transformed into a professional knowledge base for teaching. By reviewing educational history, we offer an incomplete explanation for why the United States has no countrywide system that meets these requirements. We conclude by wondering if U.S. researchers and teachers can make different choices in the future to enable a system for building and sustaining a professional knowledge base for teaching.

The learning gap : why our schools are failing and what we can learn from Japanese and Chinese education

Lisuride can be administered to persons prior or subsequent to the ingestion of alcohol to block the behavioral and physiological effects of the alcohol.

Using Video Surveys to Compare Classrooms and Teaching Across Cultures: Examples and Lessons From the TIMSS Video Studies

Examining the extent, nature, and scope of peer group influence on academic outcomes is an important direction for future research to enrich our understanding of adolescent motivation, engagement, and achievement. Conceptual and methodological issues involved in studying peer groups are discussed. Existing research that addresses the influence of peer groups on academic outcomes is reviewed. Processes of how peer groups socialize achievement beliefs and behaviors are considered. Promising directions for future research are discussed.

Cognitive performance and academic achievement of Japanese, Chinese, and American children.

Chinese, Japanese, and American children at grades 1 and 5 were given a battery of 10 cognitive tasks and tests of achievement in reading and mathematics. Samples consisted of 240 children in each grade in each culture. 2 major purposes of the study were to determine possible differences in cognitive abilities of Japanese, Chinese, and American children and to investigate the possible differential relation of scores on cognitive tasks to reading by children of the 3 cultures. Similarity was found among children of the 3 cultures in level, variability, and structure of cognitive abilities. Chinese children surpassed Japanese and American children in reading scores; both Chinese and Japanese children obtained higher scores in mathematics than the American children. Prediction of achievement scores from the cognitive tasks showed few differential effects among children of the 3 cultures. The results suggest that the high achievement of Chinese and Japanese children cannot be attributed to higher intellectual abilities, but must be related to their experiences at home and at school.

Mathematics Teaching in the United States Today (and Tomorrow): Results From the TIMSS 1999 Video Study:

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 Video Study examined eighth-grade mathematics teaching in the United States and six higher-achieving countries. A range of teaching systems were found across higher-achieving countries that balanced attention to challenging content, procedural skill, and conceptual understanding in different ways. The United States displayed a unique system of teaching, not because of any particular feature but because of a constellation of features that reinforced attention to lower-level mathematics skills. The authors argue that these results are relevant for policy (mathematics) debates in the United States because they provide a current account of what actually is happening inside U.S. classrooms and because they demonstrate that current debates often pose overly simple choices. The authors suggest ways to learn from examining teaching systems that are not alien to U.S. teachers but that balance a skill emphasis with attention to challenging mathematics and conceptual development.

Counting in Chinese: Cultural variation in a basic cognitive skill

Learning to count is an early and important cognitive accomplishment implicated in the development of later mathematical abilities. Research on the development of counting (e.g., Gelman & Gallistel, 1978 ) has focused on the way that childrens understanding of number guides the task of learning to count. Because counting requires use of a number system, the features of a cultures particular numbering system could also impact the development of counting. The current research compared the developmental course of counting in two languages (English & Chinese) with somewhat divergent systems for forming number names. Large country differences generally favoring the Chinese subjects were found in childrens ability to form proper number names and in the kinds of errors they make. The “teens” in English pose a particular stumbling block for American childrens counting. Common sources of difficulty in counting across cultures were also found. In particular, children in both countries had difficulty with the need to coordinate incrementing units and decades lists in counting. In using counting as a tool to determine how many objects there are in a set, similar country differences were found. However, country effects in counting objects were found only for number-naming errors. Despite the difficulties American children have with mastering the English numbering system, there was no effect of country on the likelihood that children would skip or double count objects. Implications of these results for linguistic models of number generation for theories of the organization of complex skills and for later achievement differences in mathematics are discussed.

Reading Disabilities: The Case of Chinese, Japanese, and English.

A common hypothesis has considered apparent differences in the incidence of reading disability in Asian and Western languages to be related to orthographic factors. A reading test was constructed in English, Japanese, and Chinese to assess the validity of this proposal. Large samples of fifth-grade children in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States were given the test and a battery of 10 cognitive tasks. Strong evidence was found that reading disabilities exist among Chinese and Japanese as well as among American children. In discriminating between groups of poor and average readers by means of the cognitive tasks, the combined effects of general information and verbal memory proved to be the most powerful predictors in Japan and Taiwan. General information and coding emerged as the most effective predictors for American children. The results cast doubt upon the crucial significance of orthography as the major factor determining the incidence of reading disabilities across cultures.

“Mental abacus”: The effect of abacus training on Chinese children's mental calculation

Abstract Skilled abacus operators report visualizing a mental image of the abacus, and performing rapid mental calculation by manipulating the beads on their “mental abacus.” Eleven-year-old Chinese children at three levels of abacus expertise were observed performing both abacus and mental addition. Response times and errors were examined as a function of problem type and mode of computation. Chinese performance was compared with a group of American adults performing the same mental additions. Chinese were also given a task which required them to access intermediate states of mental abacus calculation. Results indicate that abacus training has both quantitative and qualitative effects on childrens mental calculation skill, and that a “mental abacus” is used by experts.

Digit memory in Chinese and English: Evidence for a temporally limited store*

This paper describes 3 studies comparing short-term memory for digits between native speakers of Chinese and of English. The first study documents, with large samples of kindergarten, first-, and second-grade children, a Chinese advantage in memory for digits. The Chinese subjects, at all grade levels, remembered at least 2 more digits, on average, than did American or Japanese subjects. The second study compared digit memory of 6- and 7-year-old children, Chinese and American, under forward, backward and grouped conditions. The provision of a grouping strategy helped both Chinese and American subjects equally, which fails to support strategy use as the primary explanation of digit memory differences. Further, Chinese children performed more poorly than American children on the backward span. The final study, carried out on Chinese and American university students, investigated differences in pronunciation duration of Chinese and English number words as a possible explanation of span differences. Chinese number words were found to be of significantly shorter pronunciation duration than English number words; and total pronunciation duration for a subject’s maximum span did not differ between Chinese and Americans. These findings provide evidence for a temporally limited store.

Teachers' analyses of classroom video predict student learning of mathematics: Further explorations of a novel measure of teacher knowledge

This study explores the relationship between teacher knowledge and student learning in the area of mathematics by developing and evaluating an innovative approach to assessing teacher knowledge. This approach is based on teachers’ analyses of classroom video clips. Teachers watched 13 video clips of classroom instruction and then provided written comments on the interactions of the teacher, students, and content. The quality of teachers’ analyses, coded using an objective rubric, are shown to be reliable and valid, relating both to another widely used measure of teacher knowledge and to teachers’ own students’ learning (from pre- to posttest).