And, U.S. teachers need more time to collaborate on lessons and more professional development support if the country is to close this teaching gap, a University of Delaware Professor of Education says. The researchers use the results of an unprecedented set of international classroom videotapes to support their idea that it is not teachers, but teaching methods, that have been keeping US students from scoring well on tests that compare their achievements with those of their peers in other countries. We don't realize that it's how effective a lesson is and not the individual teacher that matters. Great lessons can be passed along.
Teachers come and go.
It was the first time videos were used for international comparative study. The general story is that U.S. students do quite well in mathematics relative to their international peers in fourth grade and then their relative standing drops. We watched many examples of good teachers employing limited methods that, no matter how competently they were executed, could not lead to high levels of student achievement. Additionally, the researchers note that while U.S. education is always in the process of reform, it is not always in the process of improving, and that the country has no built-in mechanism to improve teaching approaches. In the U.S., we think we can change the way we do something one year and next year see results.