[December 1, 1998]

We all work at being good teachers, but good teachers differ greatly in how they teach, what they teach, and what their educational goals are. Yet worldwide, as developmental theory and classroom practice inform each other, teachers have become much more encouraging of children's efforts. Below, are two examples that are concerned with interactive teaching. I hope everyone's semester is going well and I would be interested to hear about other interesting teaching examples. In a first grade classroom in central Tokyo, 6-year-old Shoji Itoh repeatedly jumped up from his seat during the reading lesson. Each time he shouted "baka yaro" (you're a jerk) at the teacher so loudly that it could be heard several classrooms away. Each time little Itoh yelled, Ms. Nakanishi went over to his seat, put her arm around him and pointed to the sentence currently being read out loud. The class read aloud, with intermittent outbursts from Itoh, for about 15 minutes. Then they began an activity called "collecting words." Up and down the rows, each of the 35 students named a favorite object in a picture projected on the front wall. Mrs. Nakanish wrote each named object on the board. When Itoh's turn came, he named "electric rice cooker." Ms. Nakanishi asked him to come to the front of the class, put her arm around him, and praised him extravagantly: "You are very smart; let's all clap for him." Itoh gave a theatrical bow to the class's applause and took his seat, beaming. [Lewis, 1996] First day of school. "There are six runners on each team. There are two teams in the race. How many runners altogether? Teacher: Jack, what answer solution did you come up with? Jack: Fourteen. Teacher: Fourteen. How did you get that answer? Jack: Because six plus six is twelve. Two runners on two teams. (Jack stops talking, puts his hands to the side of his face and looks down at the floor. Then he looks at the teacher and at his partner, Ann. He turns and faces the front of the room with his back to the teacher and mumbles inaudibly.) Teacher: Would you please say that again. I didn't quite get the whole thing. Jack: (Softly, still facing the front of the room). It's six runners on each team. Teacher: Right Jack: (Turns to look at the teacher) I made a mistake. It's wrong. It should be twelve. (He turns and faces the front of the room again.) [Jack's acute embarrassment confounded the teacher's intention that the children should publicly express their thinking and, more generally engage in mathematical practice characterized by conjecture, argument, and justification.] Teacher: (Softly): Oh, okay. Is it okay to make a mistake? Andrew: Yes. Teacher: Is it okay to make a mistake, Jack? Jack: Yes. Teacher: You bet it is. As long as you're in my class it is okay to make a mistake. Because I make them all the time, and we learn from our mistakes a lot. Jack already figured out, "Oops, I didn't have the right answer the first time (Jack turns and looks at the teacher and smiles), but he kept working at it and he got it. [Cobb et al., 1993] Education has been justly criticized for swinging from harsh, dull standard-based, lessons to warm, lax, non-directional approach. Both these excerpts, different as they are, avoid these extremes. In both cases, the teacher saw something wrong and worked to correct it getting one boy to conform to the group, and the other to figure out the problem. In both cases, the teacher uses the other students as allies, rather than allowing antagonism. And finally, in both cases the child's ego is protected so, hopefully, he will want to learn again. The American who observed the Japanese classrooms was struck by the cultural emphasis on cooperation, not only in this instance but overall. Teachers explained that disruptive children needed to strengthen their bonds to other children. What I saw as issues of control and misbehavior, teachers talked about issues of community; they transformed any questions about discipline into discussions of the teacher-child bond and the bonds among children. [Lewis, 1996] It is easy to ask if these teachers were misguided. Is the Japanese teacher rewarding disruption instead of controlling it? Is the American teacher sidestepping correct math, by not only allowing the student's mistake, but emphasizing that she makes mistakes as well. In both cases, the proof is in the results, not just the apparent success for these two boys but in careful educational and development research that finds that the interactive approach works well. For instance, an extensive experiment on the development of reading skills, trained teachers of 3,345 children in Hawaii to follow a Vygotskiian model that emphasized social interaction within the zone of proximal development. Instead of the usual practice of having students read silently to themselves, with the teacher asking the entire class some simple comprehension questions, the teachers had groups of children read a paragraph aloud together, and then the groups answered questions designed to elicit discussion, as well as to deepen understanding. Compared to a control group who received more conventional teaching within the same schools, the experimental children scored significantly higher on standard tests of reading achievement [Klein, 1988]. A similar approach is being taken in many math classes, as workbooks, rote learning, and pure memorization are being replaced by instruction that involves "hands-on" materials and active discussion, both designed to elicit conceptual understanding, problem solving, and the ability to verbalize math concepts. -Kathleen Berger