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Abington Exports Its School Success: Asian Educators Came to Study Its Methods

Posted on: Friday, 23 December 2005, 12:00 CST

By Kellie Patrick, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Dec. 23--Students in Singapore had the top scores among 25 countries in an international math and science test. But their educators think they still have something to learn from the United States.

Two principals from Singapore and a representative of its education agency recently visited schools in Abington, hoping to see American students' creativity and communication skills in action.

The Singapore educators attribute their students' success in math and science to their city-state's highly structured form of instruction. But they suspect that structure keeps some students from asking questions and limits opportunity for independent learning and thinking.

In between brief visits earlier this month to Abington Junior High School classrooms, Rosalind Chia, principal of First Toa Payoh Primary School, said she was impressed by how naturally students asked questions.

"I like the way your children are able to communicate," she said. "Maybe we need to cultivate that more -- a conversation between students and teachers."

Chia, Pei Hwa Secondary School principal Hoi Neng Chong, and Mark Nivan Singh, of Singapore's Ministry of Education, came to Philadelphia for a training conference. While they were here, they wanted to see U.S. classrooms, and Chia's online research left her impressed with Abington, which has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a high-achieving district.

Singh said many educators from his country are visiting United States schools. Some Singapore schools are adopting a U.S.-style approach to class changes, he said. Traditionally, students in Singapore stay in the same classroom all day, with the teachers changing classes. The hope is that students' social skills will improve if they mix with a larger number of peers, he said.

"We have a lot to learn from you guys about social and emotional learning," Singh said.

The group visited a Spanish class with about 25 students. Chia, the primary school principal, asked whether the class size was typical. When told yes, she smiled and said, "We have 40 in a class back home."

For Breana Brown, 14, one of three student guides, the walks between class visits gave her a chance to ask questions about student life in Singapore. Most students there use public transportation or walk to school, she learned. Public schools don't offer kindergarten. The school day has only one half-hour break for lunch. At 11th grade, some students go to a junior college-like academic program. Others go to high-level technical study.

American researchers have been visiting Singapore and other Asian countries, too, said Patrick Gonzales, a U.S. Department of Education research analyst who coordinates the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS. That's the test in which Singapore's fourth graders scored higher in math and science than students in 25 participating countries. Singapore scored first with an average of 594; the United States was 12th with an average of 518. Eighth graders in Singapore also outperformed students in 45 countries.

"There's a growing interest in the U.S. in what is termed 'Singapore Math,'" Gonzales said. "It has been published in the U.S., and school districts are beginning to use it."

But the tricky part in all of this, he said, is that Singapore's top scores are in line with other Asian countries even though they teach math differently.

"Some are very traditional, teacher-centered, with rote memorization and lots of practice," he said. "In other, more inquiry-based models, students take more responsibility for their learning and there is more independent learning."

Researchers are now paying close attention to one characteristic that is shared by many Asian countries: a focus on teaching students the concepts behind their math lessons.

The people who run TIMSS have begun sending video cameras into classrooms to record how teachers around the world teach, Gonzales said.

In the United States, they have noticed, math and science are largely taught in isolation, without stressing the underlying concepts that allow connections between lessons within the same subject. "The lessons are being taught as discrete units," he said.

Students in other countries also get more advanced lessons at a younger age, he said.

In the United States, there is growing support to have all students take algebra by grade eight, Gonzales noted.

"In Hong Kong, 14 percent of students in grade eight are taking trigonometry," he said.

Gonzales said that U.S. students may not be advancing in math as quickly because much more time is spent on review.

"It's harder to get to more advanced topics because we are also going back and dealing with more elementary topics that, at eighth grade, students should be beyond," he said.

Another issue is homework.

The videotaped lessons revealed that in the United States, students are frequently allowed to spend the last 10 minutes of class time on homework.

Chia said her elementary students have at least an hour of homework each night.

F. Joseph Merlino, project director of the Mathematics Science Partnership of Greater Philadelphia, said the United States' competitive edge has always come from creativity. But the most rigorous classes and best teaching that foster creativity have often been enjoyed by a small group of high achievers. That's no longer enough to stay competitive.

"We're not teaching kids to think for themselves in sufficient numbers," he said.

The visiting Singapore educators said parental pressure is part of the reason why their students excel at math and science.

Parents see accomplishment in math and science as the way to success, they said. They pressure schools to offer challenging courses and pressure students to do well in them.

Contact staff writer Kellie Patrick at 215-702-7807 or kpatrick@phillynews.com.

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Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

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