Whoops -- thought I'd replied... I swear I think I'm typing a bunch of replies and then hitting the wrong button or something (that or just losing my mind... also possible!)
It's a very little thing, and doesn't take away from the math at all, but I wasn't really convinced that she had completely fair samples for her study. She says that the American teachers were considered "above average", but with no detail about what that means. Twelve of them were first year teachers, and three more had five years' experience or less (I'm looking this up on Amazon... can't find my copy... lol) And the US sample was significantly smaller than the Chinese sample... So basically I would have liked to hear more about how they were selected, because it wasn't entirely clear that they were really comparable. My gut feeling is that the best teachers of many many nationalities are probably on fairly equal footing, although for perhaps extremely different reasons. I'd love to hear about those reasons (and I think she does a great job explaining what is right about the Chinese system), but I don't think any one country has a monopoly on it.
And I should say... my background is in applied anthropology... so I spent five years of college/grad school up to my eyeballs in detailed discussions of interview-based research methods -- I'm probably way more picky than is necessary! LOL
_________________________
Erica
(And hey, at least you don't have to sit still for three hours while I complain about study samples... LOL)
Previous Topic
Index