Learning from the best school systems in East Asia

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As the economic centre of the world is shifting from West to East, so is the centre of high performance in school education. Four of the world’s five highest-performing systems are Hong Kong, Korea, Shanghai and Singapore, according to OECD’s 2009 PISA assessments of students. In Shanghai, the average 15-year old mathematics student is performing at a level two to three years above his or her counterpart in Australia, the USA and Europe.

In recent years, Australia and many OECD countries have substantially increased education expenditure, often with disappointing results. Grattan Institute’s new report, Catching up: learning from the best school systems in East Asia, shows how studying the strengths of these systems can improve our children’s lives.

Success in these systems is not determined by culture – by Confucianism, rote learning, Tiger Mothers and so on – nor is it always the result of spending more money. Instead, these systems focus on the things that are known to matter in the classroom, including a relentless, practical focus on learning and the creation of a strong culture of teacher education, collaboration, mentoring, feedback and sustained professional development.

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Gender difference does not mean genetic difference: Externalizing improves performance

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Research reported in Learning and Individual Differences, Volume 22, Issue 1, February 2012, Pages 20-24:

The fear of underperforming owing to stereotype threat affects women's performance in tasks such as mathematics, chess, and spatial reasoning.

This research considered mental rotation and explored effects on performance and on regulatory focus of instructions pointing to different explanations for gender differences. Two hundred and one participants were asked to perform the Mental Rotation Test (MRT) and were told that men perform better than women. Then they were divided into four sub-groups and provided with no additional information (control condition) or one of three explanations: (a) genetic factors, (b) widely-held stereotype, or (c) time limit.

A decrease in performance was predicted for the genetic instruction and an increase for the two alternative explanations based on externalizing. Results showed that both women and men are harmed by the genetic explanation and relieved by both the stereotype and the time limit explanations. Explanations stressing genetics and time limit as factors affecting performance favor prevention focus.

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Beyond The #Classroom: Drexel University Study Looks at Teachers on Twitter

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Teachers are stretching Twitter’s reach to more than just 140 character quips according to a new study by The iSchool at Drexel University researchers. The study, entitled “Grassroots Professional Development: How Teachers Use Twitter” suggests that teachers are molding Twitter from its common perception as a social medium for sharing personal information and observations, to a conduit for disseminating educational resources and connecting with distant colleagues.

The research notes that while 80 percent of Twitter users are “meformers,” people who include personal information and status updates in their tweets, only 2.5 percent of teachers’ tweets contain personal information. By contrast, educators tend to use Twitter to connect with distant colleagues and share and discover new ideas and teaching resources, according to the study.

Dr. Andrea Forte, assistant professor in The iSchool at Drexel, undergraduate Melissa Humphreys and Ph.D. student Thomas Park conducted the research using data collected from a web-based survey, telephone interviews and content analysis of 2,000 tweets from teachers and education-related hashtags.

“Often people think of social media like Twitter in one of two ways,” Forte said. “Either it’s mundane -a place to broadcast what you ate for breakfast, or revolutionary -a place to coordinate overthrowing your government. Actually, many people are using these media in really important everyday ways. Like sharing information that helps them do their jobs better. It’s likely that other groups of professionals are using these tools in precisely the same ways.”

The study’s data also indicate that the vast majority of people followed by teachers on Twitter are distant teachers, rather than local teachers, students, or parents. Teachers interviewed in the study also indicated that they see social media as an important tool for learning and will take the next step by teaching their students how to effectively use social media.

Forte has been an assistant professor at The iSchool since 2010. Her research focuses on how people adapt to and use new technologies, including social media. She will present the research at the International Association for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence’s Conference on Weblogs and Social Media at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland in early June.

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(We know this to be true as many teachers find article here via Twitter)

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