ABSTRACT
With the growth of high-stakes standardized testing, many educators believe that schools have become narrower in focus (Berliner, 2011; Ritchhart, 2004), and we have a climate in which innovation is often difficult to initiate and maintain in public schools. Giles and Hargreaves (2006) propose that external accountability is one of the factors that inhibits the sustainability of innovative schools. It is also argued that teachers’ own school experiences as students (Blanton, 2003) and the cultural nature of teaching (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999) explain considerably more of the variance of enacted teaching philosophy, pedagogy, and “success,” than do preservice education classes. Stigler and Hiebert (1999) report on their conclusions about the cultural nature of teaching from the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study video study of classroom practice.
