FREE ESSAY ON TRAINING SKIPS EFFECTIVE TECHNIQUES OF TEACHING

TRAINING SKIPS EFFECTIVE TECHNIQUES OF TEACHING

"U.S. Educators' Training Skips Effective Techniques of Teaching":
Article Review
The article, U.S. Educators' Training Skips Effective Techniques of Teaching, states that
teachers in the United States have not been sufficiently trained on the details of
beneficial teaching techniques. According to a study done by James W. Stigler, the United
States' teaching styles are drastically different than those of other countries. For
example, Stigler found that teachers in America focus their math lessons primarily on
rote learning and repetitive drills. On the other hand, in Japan teachers let the
students make mistakes in hopes that these mistakes will later help them understand the
problem and the reasoning behind it. The article also explains how teachers in the United
States tend to stay isolated in their room and do not share or discuss their teaching
techniques and experiences with each other in order to seem unintrusive. In Japan, the
teachers often form teams to create lessons and share ideas while also clustering all
their desks into one room. A third example of the differences among American schools
compared to schools in other countries is the teacher's main topics of discussion
concerning their students. In America teachers tend to discuss student discipline instead
of instruction, while in Japan, discussion focuses on different ways to teach lessons and
concepts. This article states how American teachers need to work collaboratively and
share their knowledge with their colleagues in order to help our students.
I agree with this article when it states that "…[the U.S.] needs to create a
culture in which teachers examine the way they teach and how they can better achieve
their own goals. I feel that this article gave some good examples on how American schools
need to improve their teaching techniques to help the students. While it is important to
teach students the process of a math problem, for example, it is also just as important
to teach them the underlying concept for the problem. Children need to be able to
experiment and discover for themselves what math concepts mean in order to own and
understand the information or skill. If students are not taught reasons for why they are
learning something, they will not be interested. I also believe that discussions between
teachers should focus on sharing their techniques and instructional ideas with each other
rather than on discipline and logistics. Sharing should not be considered to be intrusive
but as a way to build better teachers. I feel that the reason for so much 'discipline'
discussion is that American teachers don't have any power in disciplining their students,
so therefore the students are more apt to create problems. On the other hand, in Japan,
when a teacher speaks, the children have respect for authority and they listen. This
creates a better learning environment because teachers do not have to deal with as many
behavioral problems and therefore have more time to concentrate on techniques and
instruction.