University Attached Junior High School

This week, we have all been invited to visit, observe and teach at the University of Hokkaido's attached junior high school and elementary school. These two schools are closely related to the work that goes on at the university, making entrance into these schools very competitive. The teachers of these schools are also especially well-trained,  and willing to try new techniques of teaching.

Today is Wednesday, and our final day of visiting and teaching at the junior high school. In a de-briefing after our last class, Mrs. Oga mentioned that we should expect to observe a difference in the character or nature of the students in "other" public schools, largely due to the fact that the schools we are at this week have an elite student body as well as some of the more experienced staff in the Ainosato area or Sapporo.

So what did I notice? In general, I would say that I observed teachers practicing inquiry in the classroom, rather than a typical stand and deliver format. For example, we observed a math class - 3rd grade perhaps? - in which students were asked to work in groups to attempt to prove a geometric equation was true. While there are conceivably many different ways to teach such a proof, this math teacher allowed students to come up with varying methods, and to share their different viewpoints with the class. In total, four different student group leaders came up to the board - one at a time - to explain their group's decision, and their mathematic explanation. For most of the time, the teacher remained outside of the discussion, but at times did enter the debate to suggest or to guide the conversation around a particular problem or curiousity in a group's decision.
Only afterward did the teacher summarize everyone's work as having particular strong points, or in fact as having similar solutions. In some cases, students' work involved the same equality of angles or lengths of the given triangle, and these similarities were made clear only at the end of the lesson. In my opinion, this approach fostered a great deal of trust in the students, and they were able to experiment and feel comfortable in the field of geometry to try - and to also accept - various viewpoints in solving a given math problem.

In this example, another extremely interesting event occured. One group came up with a solution that involved mathetic principles that hadn't been taught yet. The teacher commented that while this solution was correct, he couldn't go into further explanation, since the national curriculum of Japan has instructed him - as the teacher - to not teach that particular principle until the fall. He commented quite openly that this was a clear problem with the Japanese education system at large, and that he understood the benefit of pursuing a student's correct - and advanced - understanding of the discipline in real time. After the class, he and I had a great chat about the differences between Canada's and Japan's education models, and I decided to pass on to him the Alberta Program of Studies curriculum guide for K-12 mathetmatics. I just forwarded it on to him today, but I hope to hear something back from him soon. He was very animated and interested in the values behind curriculum development, and was genuinely surprised to hear that - generally speaking - math teachers in Alberta can construct their own timeline for teaching mathematic concepts, and are largely in control of the content itself.

This is in polar opposite to what I have heard about Japan. Our friend and translater Tomoyo said in an aside that the constitution of Japan has mandated that education be uniform in both access and content. While Canada shares the view of access to education for all Canadians, the meaning of "content" clearly has more than one possible interpretation. Tomo also helpfully printed us an English copy of the Japanese constitution as it applies to education. I look forward to reading it... (no pictures just yet! lol)