Realising Learning

Teachers’ professional development through lesson and learning study

Keith Wood, Saratha Sithamparam

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317803812
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

The best professional development for teachers focuses on issues they encounter in the classroom. It is collaborative, school-based, learning-focused and supports teachers in solving problems of pedagogy in context. Through lesson study teachers are empowered to make decisions to improve pedagogy, curriculum and assessment based on evidence of the effect of design on learning.

Being explicit about the theories of learning underpinning their teaching decisions allows teachers to develop a shared vocabulary for the diagnosis of learning problems, redesign and evaluation of learning situations. Learning study introduces a new Variation Theory of Learning. It provides a framework for teachers to make critical decisions about what is to be learnt and how.

The fusion of lesson and learning study is changing the nature of professional development and providing teachers with a voice in the field of educational research. In Realising Learning, teachers, teacher educators and policy makers can share the progress achieved by teachers in Asia and Europe to improve teaching and learning.

1 Deepening learning through lesson and learning study

Keith Wood

Introduction

The World Association of Lesson Studies (WALS) began life in Hong Kong in 2006 with its first international conference hosted by the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The concept of lesson study needed no introduction. It had been identified in The Teaching Gap (Stigler and Hiebert 1999; Yoshida 1999) as a successful, peculiarly Asian approach to teachers’ professional development that might account in part for the success of Japanese teaching, and it attracted the attention of teacher educators in the USA and Europe. In Japanese lesson study, through kyozaikenkyu – the study of teaching materials – teachers review existing teaching materials and study students’ prior experience of what is to be learned to develop a stimulus for learning through comparative problem solving. Japanese lesson study, most evident in mathematics, emphasises the ‘research lesson’. Lesson study adapted outside Japan has placed less importance on the stimulus problem in the research lesson (Doig et al. 2011) and come to be seen by some as classroom action enquiry (Dudley 2013) that can lead to improvements in teaching. In this configuration, the lesson study can be seen as a form of action research in which teachers working in collaboration set goals for student learning, design and teach a lesson incorporating these goals, collect evidence for evaluation and, if appropriate, improve the design and teach again with a view to improving learning outcomes (Lewis et al. 2009).

By 2010, the WALS conference had begun an international journey, leaving its original base in the Hong Kong Institute of Education and moving first to the Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, thence to the University of Tokyo in 2011, on to the National Institute of Education, Singapore in 2012, and most recently in 2013, to the University of Gothenburg. In 2014 the conference is destined for the Indonesian University of Education. Membership of WALS is growing. Each year the number of countries represented increases and enriches the dialogue between teachers and academics from around the globe. In 2011, the first issue of the official journal of WALS was published entitled the International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies (IJLLS).

Uniquely, the Hong Kong WALS conference introduced a new perspective on lesson study known as learning study. This approach to teacher action research incorporates a particular theory of learning referred to as variation theory. The effect of this is to focus the study on the object of learning and to provide a basis on which to develop understanding of the conditions for learning the object. This distinguishes learning study from other types of lesson study where the contribution of theory can remain implicit (Lo and Marton 2012). Being explicit advantages the participants by providing a guiding principle for the design and evaluation of learning situations. This feature of learning study appears to support the development of clinical practice whereby the object of learning is explicitly emphasised, enmeshing theory, content, pedagogy and the individual experiences of the learners, and where the outcomes are judged on the basis of evidence and can be reported for the information of others so that they can see what works and why.

In her closing remarks at the Tokyo Conference in 2011, the President of WALS urged members to go deeper in their reports of lesson and learning studies (LLS), to focus on the object of learning and to tell more about what it is and how it is successfully achieved by learners through lesson and learning study. The idea of this book is to take up the challenge to go deeper into LLS.

The selection of sources in this chapter, while far from a review of the growing literature on LLS, is an attempt to highlight the breadth of interest, research and practice in LLS, and to seek similarities and explore emerging differences in LLS at this point in time. The literature on lesson study has much to say about mathematics (and, with less emphasis, science) education but far less about social science, humanities and arts education. Japanese lesson study has a long heritage, and appears to require depth of subject knowledge built through experience. To go deeper into this approach to the professional development of teachers, the following questions appear worthy of investigation: How does it lead to teacher learning and improvement in teaching? How does it lead to the improvement of student learning? What are the pre-requisites for teachers to engage with this form of professional development? Is there an implicit theory of learning underpinning this approach to professional development? And does the question of theory matter? Lesson study has been adapted as it has travelled across the globe; its variations invite exploration too. Learning study has a heritage of its own. Variation theory developed from phenomenography (Marton and Booth 1997) – a research approach to mapping the qualitatively different ways in which phenomena in the world are experienced by people – has emerged in response to the question: What does it take to provide the conditions for people to change the way they experience a phenomenon? Learning studies have been carried out by teachers in many curriculum areas. Seeking answers to all of these questions may deepen learning about the processes of LLS.

What does research tell us about effective teacher development? Darling-Hammond et al. (2009) identified the following from a review of international research:

1 Professional development should be intensive, ongoing, and connected to practice.

2 Professional development should focus on student learning and address the teaching of specific curriculum content … professional development that leads teachers to define precisely which concepts and skills they want students to learn, and to identify the content that is most likely to give students trouble, has been found to improve teacher practice and student outcomes … [For example, teachers] actively engaged in a standard ‘learning cycle’ that involved exploring a phenomenon, coming up with a theory that explained what had occurred, and applying it to new contexts. After going through this process, teachers went on to develop their own units and teach them to one another before returning to their classrooms.

3 Professional development should align with school improvement priorities and goals.

4 Professional development should build strong working relationships among teachers.

(Darling-Hammond et al. 2009: 9–11)

The contribution of lesson and learning study to teachers’ professional development

The teaching gap

Watching the recordings of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) video study to learn how eighth-grade mathematics was taught in the US, Germany and Japan prompted one observer to summarise what he had seen as follows:

In Japanese lessons, there is the mathematics … and the students … The students engage with the mathematics, and the teacher mediates the relationship between the two. In Germany, there is the mathematics as well, but the teacher owns the mathematics and parcels it out to students as he sees fit … at just the right time. In US lessons, there are the students and there is the teacher. I have trouble finding the mathematics; I just see interactions between students and teachers.

(Stigler and Hiebert 1999: 25–26)

It appeared that the comparatively low performance of US students could be explained in terms of a failure of the approach to the professional development of teachers. Lesson study, practised in Japan for many years, seemed to offer a solution to the problem.

Japanese lesson study

In a recent paper in IJLLS, Makoto Yoshida (2012) explained that the purpose of lesson study is to systematically improve teaching and student learning in classrooms. This is achieved by enhancing teachers’ content and pedagogical content knowledge, and curriculum knowledge. The approach is intended to develop lifelong learning supported by collaboration with teacher colleagues. Clearly, lesson study is not intended to be a quick fix. There are three essential components of lesson study: 1) well-researched and planned lessons with a clear hypothesis; 2) observation of the lesson in process with other participants in the study; and 3) focused post-lesson discussions based on participants’ observations. Yoshida emphasised that an effective, high quality lesson study requires that teachers have ‘strong content knowledge and pedagogical skills so they can anticipate student learning behaviours and develop a plan that reflects appropriate content and methodology for the concepts to be taught’ (Yoshida 2012: 145). This explanation suggests that lesson study does indeed ‘presuppose what it promotes’ (Law 2013: 11). To participate in lesson study requires a high degree of expertise. According to Takahashi’s (2010) interpretation of Sugiyama’s (2008) three levels of teacher expertise (Figure 1.1) as a framework for mathematics teacher education, developing expertise for teaching through lesson study is preparation for becoming a level 3 teacher. Student teachers may come to understand the process of lesson study at level 2, having strengthened their knowledge of mathematics through studying textbooks and workbooks and using online resources and courses at level 1.

Yoshida (2012) went on to explain that kyozaikenkyu involves teachers in investigating instructional materials, published research, curriculum alignment across grade levels and other resources to develop deep understanding of the content to be taught in the research lesson. They consider also students’ prior knowledge before generating a clear hypothesis for the research lesson, a plan for implementation, specification of intended outcomes, and a method for evaluating teaching and student learning.

Figure 1.1 Three levels of mathematics teachers’ expertise.

Source: Sugiyama 2008 in Takahashi 2010.

Although the preceding discussion focuses on mathematics, it seems reasonable to infer that lesson study that focuses on teaching of other curriculum subjects or has other goals for the lesson study would take the same shape and be subject to the same considerations. For mathematics, it may be possible to substitute science or history or geography and expect the same demand for deep content knowledge to be a prior requirement for successful implementation.

For insights into the practice of lesson study in Japan, see the chapter by Kiyomi Akita and Atsushi Sakamoto in this volume.

Adaptation of lesson study outside Japan

Lesson study’s enquiry cycle is consistent with the steps taken in action research (See Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 The enquiry cycle of lesson study.

Source: Adapted from Lewis et al. 2009.

In a paper published seven years after the appearance of The Teaching Gap, Lewis et al. (2006) observed that in the US the specific processes that make lesson study work – choosing tasks that reveal student thinking, designing tools that support effective data collection by teachers, crafting discussion protocols that keep the focus on student learning – were only just beginning to be understood. They identified the need for research in relation to expanding knowledge about key features of lesson study. They found that in some US studies the focus was on teacher ‘moves’ rather than student learning, that notes on observations by the teachers could be too impressionistic – perhaps missing the detail – and that discussion turned into debate rather than providing an opportunity for reflection. A more thoughtful approach was called for, one that focused on strengthening teachers’ content and pedagogical knowledge rather than seeing the focus of lesson study as the ‘refinement of lesson plans’, which seemed to miss the point. They suggested that cycles of design-based research might ‘hone the innovation’.

However, by 2009 Perry and Lewis were able to provide evidence of successful adaptation of lesson study in the US (Perry and Lewis 2009). They reported on the case of a district with more than four and a half years of experience of successful lesson study where the numbers of teachers involved had increased from 28 to 63 and the practice of lesson study had grown and deepened.

In 2010 evidence cited in Yoshida (2012) was emerging that suggested elementary and middle school mathematics teachers in particular lacked the necessary content and pedagogical content knowledge required to carry out high quality lesson studies along Japanese lines. According to Yoshida, US lesson study groups did not devote enough time to kyozaikenkyu in the way that it was practised in Japan. He suggested an alternative approach might be to conduct lesson study with materials developed in other countries that are grounded in strong mathematical content and pedagogical knowledge, are coherent and focused, and in harmony with the lesson study participants’ national curriculum.

In 2011, Perry and Lewis reported on the results of a ‘project to develop and test a research-based toolkit designed to help mathematics lesson study groups use research knowledge effectively’. The resource kit which focused on an area of mathematics included mathematics tasks to solve and discuss (along with related student work); curriculum materials, lesson plans and video (from Japanese and US research studies); research articles; and a suggested process for investigating these materials. Randomised controlled studies were carried out to investigate the impact of use of the kit on teachers’ and students’ knowledge of fractions and on teachers’ attitudes toward professional learning. And at the same time these researchers had embarked on a study of the introduction of Teaching Through Problem Solving (TTP), an approach widely used in Japan. This work was funded by the US Education Department.

Dudley (2013) has reported on lesson study in England, interpreted as ‘classroom action enquiry [to develop] new practice knowledge’, which introduced the features of ‘case pupils’ and analysis of teacher discourse as ‘a window on teacher learning’. Case pupils could, for example, be pupils identified as disengaged or representatives of high, middle or low attainment groups. The discussion that followed the research lesson was, by agreement of the group, confined to observation of the learning of case pupils: in comparison with what the teachers had predicted; in comparison with the learning of other pupils in the class; and in terms of the effect of the teaching on pupils’ learning, with a view to redesign if necessary.

According to Chen and Yang (2013), lesson study has been practised in mainland China for more than 100 years, on and off. The early emphasis was on the analysis and improvement of teachers’ behaviour rather than student learning. More recently, teachers’ lesson study as collaborative action resear...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Deepening learning through lesson and learning study
• 2 Lesson study and teachers’ professional development in Japan
• 3 Exploring the variety and quality in the practice of lesson study in Singapore schools
• 4 Teacher learning through lesson study in Indonesia
• 5 From lesson to learning study: the experience of classroom-based professional development in Brunei Darussalam
• 6 The idea and practice of learning study
• 7 Learning study, variation theory and catering for individual differences: the Hong Kong experience
• 8 Lesson and learning study and the idea of the teacher as a researcher
• 9 Teacher professional development and lesson and learning study
• Index