GER Team
Makoto
Yoshida, Ph.D.
Founder and President
myoshida@globaledresources.com
Makoto Yoshida is a founder and president of Global Education Resources.
His doctoral dissertation on lesson study in Japan, presented to the University
of Chicago, helped introduce lesson study to the U.S. Yoshida coined the
term “lesson study” by translating the original Japanese term
“jugyokenkyu” in this dissertation research. He is considered
one of the foremost researchers and educators of lesson study in the U.S.,
and his work is cited heavily in Stigler and Hiebert's book, The Teaching
Gap (1999) (Chapter 7, Beyond Reform: Japan's Approach to the Improvement
of Classroom Teaching). In addition, Yoshida coauthored a book entitled
“Lesson Study: A Japanese Approach to Improving Mathematics Teaching
and Learning,” (2004) based on this dissertation research on lesson
study in Japan with Clea Fernandez of Teachers College, Colombia University.
He also co-edited a book entitled “Building
Our Understanding of Lesson Study,” a comprehensive introduction
to lesson study for teachers with Patsy Wang-Iverson. In addition, Akihiko
Takahashi (DePaul University) and Yoshida's paper on lesson study, entitled
“Ideas for Establishing Lesson-Study Communities,” was published
in NCTM's journal, Teaching Children Mathematics in 2004. He oversaw the
English translation of a series of Japanese
elementary school mathematics textbooks to support lesson study in
the United States.
Born in Hiroshima, Japan, Makoto came to the U.S. to study at Lewis and
Clark College in Portland, OR, where he received his B.A. in education
and psychology. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in education from the University
of Chicago.
William
C. Jackson, III
Founder and Senior Vice-President
bjackson@globaledresources.com
Bill Jackson, co-founder of GER, is the Mathematics Coach at School No. 2 in Paterson, NJ, which pioneered lesson study in the United States. He has conducted lesson study since 1999 with U.S. and Japanese teachers and taught many research lessons. Bill has been instrumental in introducing lesson study in the U.S. and continues to actively promote it by speaking at national and regional conferences on lesson study and mathematics teaching and learning, teaching public research lessons.
Bill went to Japan on The Fulbright Memorial Teacher Program to study
the Japanese educational system in 1999 to and was one of a select number
of American educators to represent the United States at the U.S./Japan
Mathematics Summit in 2002. He is the author of several chapters of Singapore
Mathematics (California Edition) textbooks and was part of the English
translation team for Tokyo Shoseki’s Mathematics
for Elementary School, the most widely used mathematics textbook in
Japan. He has been teaching elementary and middle school for over 20 years
and has a B.A. in economics from Rutgers University and an M. Ed. in multicultural
education from William Paterson University.
Tad
Watanabe, Ph.D.
Consultant
tad@globaledresources.com
Tad Watanabe is an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at Kennesaw State University, located just outside of Atlanta. He received his Ph. D in mathematics education from Florida State University. As a native of Japan, Tad was always interested in mathematics education practices in his home country. He spent seven months in Japan during the summer and fall of 2000 and attended more than 15 lesson study open houses and school-based lesson study meetings. He has published several articles on Japanese elementary school math curriculum and lesson study. His article "Learning from Japanese Lesson Study" appeared in the March 2002 issue of Educational Leadership. Tad has collaborated with lesson study groups in Rochester, NY, Volusia County, FL, and at Paterson Public School No. 2 in Paterson, NJ.