Singapore Math Method - Other Issues and Observations

Other Issues and Observations

Alignment with state standards

Singapore Math emphasizes the essential math skills recommended in the NCTM Curriculum Focal Points (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics), the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, and the proposed Common Core State Standards, though it generally progresses to topics at an earlier grade level than indicated by those US standards. The US-adapted versions also include extra math topics that are currently popular in state math standards, but the textbooks try to use even these topics as a vehicle for teaching essential/core/focal math skills. By contrast, American textbooks often have state-specific versions or supplements that cover all of that state’s objectives, and they typically treat extra math topics as the primary focus of the chapters devoted to those topics.

Probability, statistics, and data analysis

American textbooks and state standards currently give this much more emphasis than Singapore Math, the NCTM Curriculum Focal Points, the National Math Panel, and the proposed national Core Curriculum. The current American emphasis is on topics that don’t rely on prior math skills and are not developed further (defining probability, constructing tables and charts) rather than the core building blocks of statistical analysis (probability distributions, margin of error, hypothesis testing). Some analysts believe that even these non-core statistics topics offer real-world mathematical applications and 21st century skills, but the emerging consensus is that they should be almost entirely eliminated from the primary curriculum. Interim results of a comparative study of Singapore and US math education systems were released that show that Singapore students (who do not have a formal statistics strand in their curriculum) do better in the TIMSS tests involving statistics questions than do US students (who study statistics in each grade) in similar tests.

Teacher training

Teacher’s Guides are available for Singapore Math. Experienced trainers are also available, although schools may feel that teaching and learning from these books is so simple that teacher training is not needed.

Expense trade-offs

Paperbook Singapore Math textbooks are less durable but much cheaper than standard hardback textbooks. Also, unlike standard textbooks for which teachers create their own worksheets or the student copies a problem onto his or her own paper, Singapore Math textbooks have companion workbooks which are consumable (as is the entire kindergarten program). Potential adopters should compare the cost, quality, and convenience of consumable workbooks to the cost, quality, and burden of teacher-created worksheets and student-copied problems.

Cultural differences

Cultural differences between the US and Singapore, and among diverse cultures within the US, may be relevant. Cultural differences do have large impacts on student learning; however, that does not imply that students from different cultures respond differently to the distinctive features of Singapore Math – e.g., the focus on essential math skills, exceptionally simple explanations, and the bar model method of solving multi-step word problems.