What the United States Can Learn From Singapore's World-Class Mathematics System (and what Singapore can learn from the United States): An Exploratory Study

Comparison of Linear Functions in Middle Grades Textbooks from Singapore and the United States

“…While these studies examined many aspects of curriculum, the results revealed details concerning the textbook curriculum in particular. The results showed that textbooks in countries that placed at the top of the TIMSS were different than textbooks in the U.S. (Ahuja, 2006;Ginsburg et al, 2005;Schmidt et al, 2001). These studies and their results are discussed below.…”

“…Several researchers have examined elementary textbooks from Singapore and the U.S. (Cai, Lo, & Watanabe, 2002;Ginsburg et al, 2005). Many researchers (Cai et al, 2002;Li, 2000;Mayer, Sims, & Tajika, 1995;Zhu & Fan, 2004) have compared texts from the U.S. and a country other than Singapore.…”

“…Additionally, past textual analyses have shown that there are many differences in elementary textbooks from the U.S. and countries that showed the highest mathematics achievement on the TIMSS tests (Ginsburg, Leinwand, Anstrom, & Pollock, 2005;Harries & Sutherland, 2000) and a few, general differences in the middle school texts of these countries (Schmidt, Houang & Cogan, 2002). The differences found in the middle school texts were based upon a general examination of topics without considering individual problems within a topic.…”

“…Within curriculum studies involving the nations from the TIMSS studies, the textbook has been examined as only one of many aspects of the mathematical system (Ahuja, 2006;Ginsburg et al, 2005;Schmidt et al, 2002). These researchers contended that if the U.S. wants to have a world-class mathematics system, several features of the system must be addressed.…”

“…The coding scheme was an amalgamation of coding symbols and ideas from past studies (Anderson et al, 2000;Ginsburg et al, 2005;Harries & Sutherland, 2000;Li, 2000;Mayer et al, 1995;Mesa, 2004;O'Callaghan, 1998;Tieso, 2005;Zhu & Fan, 2004). The creation of the coding scheme and codebook was informed by the work of Neuendorf (2002).…”