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rotemmay · Joined: 26 Apr 2011 Posts: 26 Location: US and Israel

Hi all,
I have a bad feeling this is going to be deleted because the moderators might consider it off-topic, but I couldn't find a place in the other forums that would work for this post so I'm posting it here.

Here's an interesting article that discusses a study that was done in the UK on where the best-behaved teenage students are:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13508807

According to this article, if you want students with good behavior, your best bet is to go teach in Japan or China Smile

.

Rotem

GambateBingBangBOOM · Joined: 04 Nov 2003 Posts: 2021 Location: Japan

Glenski · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 12844 Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

Not much to the news article itself. Hard to believe the OECD would equate overall classroom behavior with just one question in a survey.

Some of the comments that followed the news story were dead on for Japan.

1) It is very difficult to make meaningful comparisons between different education systems, operating in different cultural and economic contexts. Therefore this survey should be taken with a pinch of salt.

2) This is not a good measure of classroom disruption; it is culturally not considered rude in Italy for people to talk at the same time, whereas Japanese has very formal communication protocols in the language. To compare across cultures you need a measure of disruption which is the same for everybody ... sociology gives science a bad name.

naturegirl321 · Joined: 04 May 2003 Posts: 9041 Location: home sweet home

The OECD is made up of about 30 countries. I hardly think that that's representative of the whole world.

steki47 · Joined: 20 Apr 2008 Posts: 1029 Location: BFE Inaka

Related to Glenski's comments, what constitutes good behavior varies quite a bit. I have heard that university students in Brazil will often come to class 15-20 minutes late but then stay 20 minutes or so after the official time. Not likely in Japan.

The flipside is that I have had the opportunity to teach English to Brazilians in Japan and they often were more willing to speak up and take risks. Try new grammar and ask questions. As such they improved quickly. Something often lacking among my Japanese students.

Interesting idea, but the qualities need to be defined/narrowed down/averaged a bit better. Like the Happiness Index.