Perspective on U.S. Curriculum and Instruction

Author: Robert Glaser, University of Washington, Cognition and Technology Group
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2002-09-01
Features: This book is a culmination of years of research by the Cognition and Technology Group at the University of Washington. The Jasper series developed by the group has been widely popular in the United States since the 1980s, exerting significant influence. As one of the newest mathematics teaching cases in the U.S., this book reflects the efforts and attempts made in mathematics education reform. The new content, ideas, and perspectives presented in the book are worth everyone's appreciation and reflection. It should be said that the Jasper Adventure series is designed for mathematics courses, but the educational philosophy it embodies transcends disciplinary boundaries. This actually contains two layers of meaning. First, Jasper Adventures create a broader context that not only helps students integrate mathematical concepts but also organically blends mathematical knowledge with knowledge from other disciplines. As the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) commented on Jasper, "These adventure stories are primarily centered on the discovery and resolution of mathematical problems, but it is particularly noteworthy that each adventure story provides rich opportunities for problem-solving, questioning, communication, and interaction with other fields such as science, sociology, literature, and history." Second, if we understand the Jasper series itself as a design model and method for curriculum and instruction, then it should not be limited to the field of mathematics. The core ideas embedded within it should naturally be transferred to the design and implementation activities of all disciplines. I believe that both mathematics teachers and teachers in other subjects can gain profound insights after reading this book. The book can be broadly divided into three parts. The first part provides a general introduction to the Jasper series and discusses in detail the various internal and external conditions that contributed to its creation. The second part delves into the Jasper series from the perspectives of curriculum, teaching and evaluation, and teacher learning. The third part summarizes the lessons learned from the development process of the Jasper series and looks ahead to future project development. Throughout the book, the narratives and analyses surrounding the design, implementation, and evaluation of the Jasper series attempt to convey three clear and important educational concepts to the readers.
1. The contextual nature of knowledge and its learning. Experimental research on human cognition has shown that if teaching does not help students contextualize knowledge, then the knowledge they learn can only be stored as isolated facts and limited to specific situations, making such knowledge essentially inert. The authors of this book—the Cognition and Technology Group at the University of Washington—have also demonstrated through experiments that the inertness of knowledge is widespread among students and is strongly influenced by the initial ways in which information is acquired. Based on this, the idea of creating new learning environments and helping students contextualize knowledge directly led to the development of the Jasper Adventures teaching context. In the Jasper Adventures series, stories like "The Cedars River Journey," "The Great Fuss," and "Blueprint for Success" are essentially learning contexts (anchors) embedded with various problems, mathematical concepts, and skills (algebra, statistics and probability, geometry). Students begin by developing an understanding of these skills and concepts while using their own knowledge to question the adventure stories. In solving the challenging problems in the stories, they acquire various learning strategies, and students in different groups can share the different mathematical concepts and skills they propose during problem-solving. From another perspective, the development of Jasper Adventure contexts helps students "steal" knowledge that is truly important and useful in a near-real and complex problem context, which directly confirms the tacit nature of knowledge. Therefore, the contextual and tacit nature of knowledge and learning, and the inherent constructive nature of knowledge and learning that directly reflects this, constitute the most prominent feature of this book.
2. The significant role of educational technology in classroom teaching. The power of technology is fully reflected in the design of the Jasper series. Video not only provides students with realistic learning contexts in multimedia representation forms but also makes it easier for them to revisit and randomly access different segments of the adventure contexts through advanced barcode selection technology and digital selection technology. What makes it even more distinctive is that the researchers of the Cognition and Technology Group have fully utilized the integration of telecommunications, television technology, and internet technology to design the operational platform for the SMART Challenges series. Through dynamic and static simulation software, students and teachers can represent problem designs in multiple ways and drive problem-solving through interaction and feedback. In the Jasper series, information technology has completely surpassed the view that technology is merely a cognitive tool. Concepts such as human-computer interaction, virtual reality, immediate access, and feedback have been fully integrated into the application of technology, placing the Jasper cases at the forefront of technology and the times.
3. A new understanding of problem-solving. Problem-solving is a core topic across all disciplines, especially in mathematics. The Jasper Adventures series represents an example of problem-based learning, with the overall goal of helping students transform isolated facts into powerful conceptual tools during the problem-solving process. In its design, problems are first defined as complex problems based on real-world contexts to increase student engagement and help them discover the connection between mathematical problems and reasoning in daily life. Second, after each adventure story concludes, students are encouraged to identify and clarify the problems they need to solve and are provided with opportunities for increasingly advanced reasoning. Third, all the data needed to solve problems are embedded in the video of the story context, requiring students to apply real-world standards to their decisions about the data based on their own understanding, while emphasizing the multiple possibilities of problem-solving answers. Finally, problem-solving is a shared interactive social negotiation activity within a learning community. For example, when solving the problem "The Great Fuss," students must use the data they have collected to sample and predict the number of students who will buy tickets for the event. Some students might use percentages to solve this problem, while others might use fractions. When students share these methods, they have the opportunity to interact with their understanding of fractions and percentages, thereby constructing a genuine understanding of the problem and its solutions through such activities.
Of course, the value of this book is not limited to the above three points, and readers from different backgrounds will undoubtedly gain even more benefits from it. More importantly, we should recognize that the Jasper series, as a multifaceted mirror, has reflected the significant strides made by the U.S. education and mathematics education communities in integrating curriculum, teaching, and information technology. With the support of advanced theory and technology, U.S. mathematics curricula are increasingly respecting the natural essence of human learning, aligning more closely with meaningful student learning, and promoting the transformation of knowledge into real-life contexts.