(no subject)
Nations that try to teach math in terms of daily life have the lowest test scores.
My intuition is that the author of this report, who calls himself Tom Loveless, is angling the whole thing towards getting attention. The data's pretty interesting but the conclusions are senseless. Looking more closely at what they found:
His findings come from the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, a test of fourth-graders and eighth-graders across the globe. Along with answering math questions, students were asked whether they enjoyed math and whether they usually did well in it.
The eighth-grade results reflected a common pattern: The 10 nations whose students enjoyed math the most all scored below average. The bottom 10 nations on the enjoyment scale all excelled.
Japan, Hong Kong and the Netherlands were among those with high scores and lower enjoyment or confidence among students.
Within a given nation, the high-confidence kids did better than their peers. But that changed when students were compared with a different peer group. Even the least confident students in Singapore outscored the most confident Americans.
Look at the data in a different way, and you'll discover that every rational teacher should try to make math enjoyable. (Within a country, the more a kid enjoys math, the better he does.) Perhaps the only other rational course of action would be for all teachers in a country to get together and say, "I'll promise not to let my kids enjoy it if you'll promise not to let yours."
I'm just trying to show the problems you get when you take yourself too seriously, and don't use controls.
My (openly nonscientific :) guess would be that those nations that do badly in math try to make up for it by making the kids enjoy the subject, and that that (positive) change only helps a little bit, rather than a lot.
I'd be interested to know, additionally, if countries whose students hate math correlate to countries whose parents are highly involved in their kids' education.
Actually..... hm... just let me think what would happen if that were the case... ok. Suppose parents' involvement was the one main guarantee of student success. Then, in countries where there was a low level of parent involvement, those students who had them would feel wonderfully successful and confident in academics as a whole. Contrariwise, in countries where nearly every child's parents were involved, confidence could be built only by outstripping those other frustratingly advanced students.
So confidence within every country would still correlate to success within that country. OK, check.
Now, suppose you are a teacher who teaches one class of students whose parents are involved, and one class of students whose parents are not. In which class do you think you'll spend more time trying to find ways to motivate the students, make them happy and proud and interested in the subject? For which class would you end up buying a barrelful of M&Ms in order to demonstrate the mathematics of lotteries and chance?
Yes. Anyways. Moral. The study is horribly inadequate. No conclusions should be drawn.
My intuition is that the author of this report, who calls himself Tom Loveless, is angling the whole thing towards getting attention. The data's pretty interesting but the conclusions are senseless. Looking more closely at what they found:
His findings come from the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, a test of fourth-graders and eighth-graders across the globe. Along with answering math questions, students were asked whether they enjoyed math and whether they usually did well in it.
The eighth-grade results reflected a common pattern: The 10 nations whose students enjoyed math the most all scored below average. The bottom 10 nations on the enjoyment scale all excelled.
Japan, Hong Kong and the Netherlands were among those with high scores and lower enjoyment or confidence among students.
Within a given nation, the high-confidence kids did better than their peers. But that changed when students were compared with a different peer group. Even the least confident students in Singapore outscored the most confident Americans.
Look at the data in a different way, and you'll discover that every rational teacher should try to make math enjoyable. (Within a country, the more a kid enjoys math, the better he does.) Perhaps the only other rational course of action would be for all teachers in a country to get together and say, "I'll promise not to let my kids enjoy it if you'll promise not to let yours."
I'm just trying to show the problems you get when you take yourself too seriously, and don't use controls.
My (openly nonscientific :) guess would be that those nations that do badly in math try to make up for it by making the kids enjoy the subject, and that that (positive) change only helps a little bit, rather than a lot.
I'd be interested to know, additionally, if countries whose students hate math correlate to countries whose parents are highly involved in their kids' education.
Actually..... hm... just let me think what would happen if that were the case... ok. Suppose parents' involvement was the one main guarantee of student success. Then, in countries where there was a low level of parent involvement, those students who had them would feel wonderfully successful and confident in academics as a whole. Contrariwise, in countries where nearly every child's parents were involved, confidence could be built only by outstripping those other frustratingly advanced students.
So confidence within every country would still correlate to success within that country. OK, check.
Now, suppose you are a teacher who teaches one class of students whose parents are involved, and one class of students whose parents are not. In which class do you think you'll spend more time trying to find ways to motivate the students, make them happy and proud and interested in the subject? For which class would you end up buying a barrelful of M&Ms in order to demonstrate the mathematics of lotteries and chance?
Yes. Anyways. Moral. The study is horribly inadequate. No conclusions should be drawn.