[Western classrooms have adopted mathematics teaching techniques from Asia before. In the past, a small number of schools in the West experimented with a Singapore-style approach. It is similar to the method used in Shanghai, which is seen as having the best math teachers in China.]
By
Amy Qin
 |
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Students
at a primary school in Shanghai last year. Under a government-backed
initiative
in Britain, more
than half the primary schools in England will adopt a
teaching approach to math that
is used in top-scoring places like Shanghai
and Singapore.Credit
Imaginechina, via Associated Press
|
BEIJING — Educators around the world were
stunned when students in Shanghai came first in their international
standardized testing debut, in 2010, besting their counterparts in dozens of
countries in what some called a Sputnik-like moment.
Now, some British schools will try to
replicate that success by using translated textbooks that are otherwise all but
identical to those in public elementary schools around Shanghai.
Starting in January, teachers in England will
have the option of using “Real Shanghai Mathematics,” a series of 36 textbooks
translated directly from Chinese into English. The only difference? The
renminbi symbols will be replaced by British pound signs.
“All this time, Asians have been learning
from the Western education system,” said Yong Zhao, a professor of education at
University of Kansas. “Suddenly, it’s the reverse.”
Western classrooms have adopted mathematics
teaching techniques from Asia before. In the past, a small number of schools in
the West experimented with a Singapore-style approach. It is similar to the
method used in Shanghai, which is seen as having the best math teachers in
China.
But experts say England is the first country
to forge ahead with a bold government-backed plan to remake some classrooms in
the image of the East. Under a $54 million initiative funded by the government,
more than half the primary schools in England will adopt a teaching approach to
math that is used in top-performing places like Shanghai and Singapore.
“I am confident that the steps we are taking
now will ensure young people are properly prepared for further study and the
21st-century workplace, and that the too often heard phrase ‘can’t do maths’ is
consigned to the past,” said Nick Gibb, the British schools minister who
oversees primary education, when he announced the initiative last year.
The teaching method, known as the “mastery”
approach, is based on the idea that all students can succeed in learning
mathematics when given proper instruction. Whereas teachers in the West might
describe a concept and then assign problems for students to solve individually,
the mastery method is more interactive. Teachers frequently pose questions to
students who are then expected to precisely explain both solutions and
underlying principles in front of their classmates.
Students learn fewer concepts under this
approach, which allows them to go into those concepts in greater depth. For
fractions, for example, teachers might ask students to apply the underlying
principle “part of a whole” in different contexts, making use of pictorial
representations and other visual techniques to explore the abstract idea.
Ideally, only when the entire class has demonstrated understanding or “mastery”
of one concept does the teacher move to the next.
Colin Hughes, the managing director of
Collins Learning, the education division of HarperCollins, which is publishing
the texts, said that the Chinese textbooks were “significantly more demanding”
than the current curriculum in England.
The mastery approach is believed to have
propelled students in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore to the top of the
rankings for the Program for International Student Assessment, a respected exam
known as PISA, which tests about half a million 15-year-olds in over 60
countries every three years.
In 2009 and again in 2012, Shanghai students
outscored their counterparts in reading, science and math. Singapore ranked
first in 2015. Experts say that besides the mastery approach, other factors
explain that success, such as heavy parental involvement and a cultural
emphasis on education.
Many Western countries, by contrast, have
lagged, making little progress in the rankings over the years. The United
States, for example, generally hovers at average or below average in overall
results, and in 2015, Britain was 27th for math, one place worse than three
years earlier.
Some schools in Britain have already begun
experimenting with mathematics textbooks based on teaching materials from
Singapore. Another series adapted from China to fit British curriculum
requirements is used in around 400 primary schools in England, according to Ni
Ming, an editor at East China Normal University Press, the Chinese publisher of
those books.
Britain’s shift to the East is a turnaround
for a country that has some of the world’s elite universities.
It is a boon for China, which has made no
secret of its wish to project soft power to accompany its growing economic
might. But those efforts have met with mixed results so far. An ambitious
endeavor to establish hundreds of Confucius Institutes on university campuses
around the world, for example, has drawn widespread criticism for what some say
are internal policies running counter to general principles of academic
freedom.
The country’s K-12 education system, by
contrast, is something of a natural cultural resource, having been built around
the all-important gaokao, or national college examination, a single competitive
test that determines where most Chinese go to university.
Besides Britain, a number of other countries,
including the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, and Malaysia, have expressed
interest in learning from the so-called Chinese mastery model. Mr. Ni, the
Chinese publisher, said that the company was in talks with education
representatives in several other countries, like the United States, about
adapting its workbooks.
The movement to learn from China comes even
as parents and educators in the country increase calls to overhaul the
education system to ease the intense pressure on students and encourage
individuality.
“Just because England is importing our
teaching materials doesn’t mean there aren’t any problems with our education
system and that it doesn’t need reform,” Xiong Bingqi, vice president of the
21st Century Education Research Institute in Beijing, wrote recently in the
Guangming Newspaper.
In some parts of China, officials have
already begun experimenting with gaokao reforms and with teaching techniques
that reward critical thinking. Dissatisfied with the education system at home,
huge numbers of parents continue to send their children to study in countries
like England and the United States.
“Right now, the national buzzword is
creativity,” said Jiang Xueqin, a researcher at Harvard who advises Chinese
schools on how to incorporate more creativity into their curriculum. “China
sees it as a source of economic power, a hurdle to be jumped over to challenge
American hegemony.”
Some experts question whether merely adopting
Chinese textbooks will have a real impact on math standards. Textbooks, Mr.
Hughes acknowledged, are not a silver bullet for education problems in Britain.
But even if the effort is well intentioned,
some critics say the mastery system is too rooted in the cultural context of
Asia to be applicable in the West.
Mr. Ni said that some of those differences
became evident in translating Chinese workbooks into English. One exercise asks
first graders to pair objects, like a shirt and shorts, for example, or a
flower and a vase.
But at least one pair had to be changed, he
said. The bird and cage in the original became a bird and a tree in the English
edition — a not-so-subtle metaphor, perhaps, for the different approaches to
teaching.
“To Chinese, the bird is just a toy,” Mr. Ni
said. “But in England, the bird has to be free in the tree.”
Follow Amy Qin on Twitter @amyyqin.
Karoline Kan contributed research.
