Improving Teaching, Not Teachers

Although I feel as though I do not fully know this important distinction by any means, I do feel like I am beginning to get a sense of how teachers and teaching differs. James Stigler and James Hiebert's The Teaching Gap offers some insight into the distinction from its opening chapter. 

Much of the discussion surrounding improvement within the educational system is abut changes to standards and assessment. What is not being targeted is the teaching methods being used by teachers. Stigler and Hiebert argue that "making higher standards a reality for students will require more than just the status quo inside our nation's classroom; curriculum, assessments, and--above all--teaching must improve dramatically" (Stigler & Hiebert, 2). Notice how it said that we do not need to usher in a new wave of teachers, but rather change the teaching occurring in the classroom. With all the constant change in standards, curriculum, and assessments being made constantly in education, we are failing to see the results we desperately want. Time and time again, they come with the promise that students will score significantly higher on the countless tests they are given. However, what has yet to be critically evaluated through these many changes is the execution of these changes, or the teaching going on in the classroom. Thus, "improving the quality of teaching must be front and center in efforts to improve students' learning" (Stigler & Hiebert, 3). 

Learning opportunities for students need to be abundant in classroom and come from a variety of approaches. What is common in a lot of American mathematics classroom is a focus "for the most part on a very narrow band of procedural skills" (Stigler & Hiebert, 10) rather than deep conceptual understanding. This repeated emphasis on being able to execute procedure causes the students to look like this. 

This emphasis allows the students to be passive learned in some regards as well as to execute the procedure mindlessly. Don't we want to students to be actively engaged and actually understand what they are doing? Thus, the learning opportunities need to excite students, rather than bore them. Let's make them feel like Kermit when they enter a math classroom!

Now let me make something clear here. I am not saying that a teacher is wanting to bore students and they do not have the intention for students to succeed in their classes. I do believe that, on the whole, teachers are trying to employ methods that allow students to perform well. What I am trying to say is that I think teachers revert to the methods they were taught in, since teaching is a cultural thing, and these methods are making us become stuck. 

The world has changed since these methods were first used. What skills we desire for students to have when they exit school have changed, However, we have maintained widespread use of traditional methods in classrooms. Thus, "if we wish to make wise decisions, we need to know what is going on in typical classrooms" (Stigler and Hiebert, 8) and positively change and transform "the one ingredient most likely to make a difference in students' learning: the quality of teaching" (Stigler and Hiebert, 2). 

It also is important to note that I'm not saying that there are not teachers out there already being all-stars and adapting their teaching to provide avenues for deep conceptual understanding for there students. They do, in fact, exist. However, "although there are teachers using extraordinary methods in all cultures, the extraordinary is not what defines most students' experiences" (Stigler and Hiebert, 10). For the sake of our students, let's work together to make extraordinary a little more ordinary!