A Case of Cultivating a Global Community of STEM Teachers

IntroductionThe integration of multicultural approaches in mathematics instruction helps to identify appropriate attitudes about the teaching and learning of mathematics and its cultural relevancy in education (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). During the last two decades researchers have identified cultural tradition as a factor that could considerably contribute to the ways in which individuals teach mathematics. We introduce an international collaborative project in which participants in the United States and South Korea worked together to create lesson plans and exchange peer feedback and shared findings on various approaches in curriculum planning. The project offered unique opportunities to explore STEM teaching-the ways science teachers contributed to the sections concerning application and problem solving in mathematics lessons-and allowed mathematics educators in both countries to think more deeply about their teaching of mathematics in conjunction with the teaching of science. More importantly, the participants exhibited different cultural traditions of pedagogy and had opportunities to broaden their perspective of teaching mathematics. This study did not have interventions or experiments designed to produce measurable outcomes, and the findings may not be generalized.Theoretical BackgroundThis study starts with the premise that different cultural traditions could remarkably impact mathematics teaching (An, Kulm, & Wu, 2004; Ma, 1999; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). A wide range of international comparative studies on mathematics education has revealed the important role of cultural influence on differences in mathematics education, in particular between Japan and the United States (Jacobs, Makoto, Stigler, & Fernandez, 1997; Whitman & Lai, 1990), Hungary and England (Andrews, 1999; Hatch, 1999; Harries, 1997), France and Britain (Jennings & Dunne, 1996), China, Hong Kong and Britain (Leung, 1995) and elsewhere.Other cross-cultural studies comparing U.S. and East Asian students' mathematical achievement have indicated that East Asian students consistently outperform American students in almost every area of mathematical knowledge (Geary, Fan, & Bow-Thomas, 1992; Gonzales, et al., 2004; Lemke, Sen, Pahlke, Partelow, Miller, Williams, Kastberg, & Jocelyn, 2004; Stevenson & Stigler, 1992). These researchers have explored and hypothesized several factors that explain such learning gaps, including different systems of numerals (Fuson & Kwon, 1991; Miller, Smith, Zhu, & Zhang, 1995; Miller & Stigler, 1987), cultural differences (e.g., parents' expectations, students' motivation, beliefs, and effort), school organization (e.g., time spent on learning mathematics in school), classroom practice (Yang & Cobb, 1995), and the content and organization of mathematics curricula (Geary, Stigler, & Fan, 1993; Stevenson & Stigler, 1992; Sutter, 2000). The outcomes of this body of research have had a large impact on current mathematics education in the United States; however, without careful exploration of the cultural influence coming from first-hand experience in other cultural systems, it is difficult to achieve a full understanding and to promote learning from different educational systems (An, 2004; Wang & Lin, 2005).Teachers' View and International Collaboration through Experiential LearningOver the past two decades, teachers' conceptions of mathematics and their views of mathematics teaching have continued to interest many research communities, as they "play a significant role in shaping teachers' characteristic patterns of instructional behavior" (Thompson, 1992, p. 130). Stigler and Hiebert (1999) stress that the integration of multicultural approaches in mathematics instruction helps to identify appropriate attitudes about the teaching and learning of mathematics. In addition, numerous studies confirm that cross-national studies in mathematics education provide opportunities for increasing mathematics educators' awareness of alternatives in teaching and learning and promoting their reflections on their own teaching practices (An, 2004; Lemke, Sen, Pahlke, Partelow, Miller, Williams, Kastberg, & Jocelyn, 2004; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999; Stigler & Perry, 1988). …