Lesson Study in Initial Teacher Education

A Critical Perspective

Phil Wood, Deborah Lynn Sorton Larssen, Nina Helgevold, Wasyl Cajkler, Phil Wood, Deborah Lynn Sorton Larssen, Wasyl Cajkler, Nina Helgevold

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781787567993
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

This book explores the use of lesson study within the context of initial teacher education. The lesson study process is broken down into its main components and these elements are discussed with references to the specific needs of practitioners, educators and researchers in initiating and developing lesson study in teacher education. Lesson Study in Initial Teacher Education highlights the importance of embedding lesson study within initial teacher education programmes, including building partnerships, making time to carry out collaborative inquiries using lesson study, and frameworks for reporting on lesson study projects. Written by a group of researcher practitioners with extensive experience in developing and managing lesson study in initial teacher education programmes, this book presents a critical overview of the principles and practices at the core of developing collaborative inquiry amongst those being educated to become teachers. By outlining an innovative framework to support professional learning classroom-based research, this book will prove invaluable for researchers, administrators and leaders in teacher education.

Chapter 1

International Changes and Approaches in Initial Teacher Education

Nina Helgevold and Chris Wilkins

Abstract

Recent decades have seen a growing consensus that as the demands on teachers becomes increasingly complex, improving the effectiveness of both initial teacher education (ITE) and career-long professional development is key to school improvement. ITE in particular has been for too long polarised at policy level, between ‘theory-led’ and ‘practice-led’ approaches. This chapter discusses how this polarisation is simplistic and unhelpful and highlights the benefits of the more constructive orientation towards a synergistic relationship between theory and practice that can occur, particularly when schools and universities collaborate closely in bringing new teachers into the profession. This chapter sets the scene for subsequent chapters in this book by signalling the potential for the collaborative inquiry-based lesson study model into ITE to enhance partnerships between schools and universities and contribute to a smooth transition from ITE into lifelong professional learning.

Keywords: Collaborative partnership; lesson study; initial teacher education; professional learning; reflective practice; theory–practice synergy

Introduction

The demands on schools and teachers are becoming more complex. Schools, and teachers working within these schools, are expected to deal effectively with student diversity, to promote tolerance and social cohesion, to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds, to use new technology and to prepare students to be active, engaged citizens, through a lifelong learning process that contributes to the democratic and economic development of societies. Quality of teaching has increasingly been viewed as the most significant factor determining the quality of students’ learning in school, with numerous studies revealing the significant difference in learning gain achieved by students according to the teachers they worked with (Hanushek & Rivkin, 2010). As a consequence, efforts to attract high-quality individuals into the profession, then to provide them with the most effective teacher preparation and ongoing professional development, has been central to school improvement efforts (Barber & Mourshed, 2007; OECD, 2011).

In order to fully reflect the complexity in today’s classrooms, there is a need to see teaching as a knowledge-rich profession, in which teachers have a strong subject matter knowledge, and depth of pedagogical understanding sufficient for them to be genuinely reflective practitioners; that is, active agents in analysing both their own practice (with regard to relevant professional standards) and their own students’ progress (with regard to appropriate standards for student learning) (OECD, 2005). Against this background, initial teacher education (ITE¹) has become a key policy area for attention. Governments are increasingly focussing on developing policies that firstly aim to guarantee an increase in the quality of ITE provision, and secondly attract high-quality entrants to the profession. This reflects the prevailing view that just as teacher quality is the most important determinant of school/education system quality, this teacher quality is largely dependent on the quality of people entering the profession and the quality of the preparation they receive in doing so (European Commission, 2015). In reality, whilst the case for linking teacher quality to student outcomes is strongly supported by numerous studies over many years (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Hanushek & Rivkin, 2010; Jacob, Lefgren, & Sims, 2010; Wayne & Youngs, 2003), the case for linking ITE quality to teacher quality is less conclusive. Whilst studies have found (perhaps unsurprisingly) that teachers who have followed formal certificated ITE programmes are more effective than those who are not (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015; Darling-Hammond, Holtzman, Gatlin, & Heilig, 2005), it is harder to trace significant differences in teacher quality according to the specific ITE route followed (Boyd, Lankford, Rockoff, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2008; Kane, Rockoff, & Staiger, 2008). All too often the debate over the effectiveness of ITE has become unhelpfully polarised between adherents of ‘traditional’, theory-led university-based routes and those who argue for a school-led, skills-based ‘apprenticeship’ approach, with a resultant slow pace of change in teacher education development over several decades (Fullan, 2001; Korthagen, Loughran, & Russell, 2006).

In this chapter we outline some key trends in international approaches to ITE (including both practice-focussed and theory-led ones) and argue that this ideological polarisation is not only simplistic, but is unsupported by research evidence. Instead we note the wide-ranging and compelling body of research evidence which suggests that the most effective teacher preparation programmes are those that are based on a strong theory-practice synergy and located within strong collaborative partnerships between universities and schools (Korthagen et al., 2006).

The argument is that ITE plays an important role both in improving the development of teaching practice and in attracting more high-quality candidates to the teaching profession and is seen as ‘a fundamental area in which to support the shift towards new working cultures and to lay the foundations for teachers’ capacity to adapt to changing contexts and circumstances’ (European Commission, 2015, p. 2). The increased attention paid to improving the quality and effectiveness of ITE is a consequence of a widespread preoccupation of national governments (and at supranational level, as in the post-Lisbon Treaty European Union) with reforming education systems to give them a more competitive edge in a ‘global knowledge economy’ (Dale & Robertson, 2009). This direct linkage between the quality of teacher education and the flourishing of global economics has been reinforced by the close attention paid to this issue by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The OECD hosted a global summit on the teaching profession in 2011; this summit’s three key outcomes in relation to teacher preparation have had a significant impact on recent national-level ITE reforms, and so are immediately recognisable in policy and practice across the globe.

Firstly, the summit report noted the important benefits of ‘… clear and concise profiles of what teachers are expected to know and be able to do in specific subject areas’ (OECD, 2011, p. 19), recommending that these profiles should guide the content and structure of ITE and teacher certification programmes as well as teachers’ ongoing evaluation, professional development and career advancement benchmarks (OECD, 2011). Secondly, the OECD report supported the trend in many countries for ITE programmes to move towards models based ‘…less on academic preparation and more on preparing professionals in school settings’ (OECD, 2011, p. 20). Finally, the report called for more flexible ITE structures that opened up new routes into teaching, and approaches that created a ‘…lifelong learning framework for teachers’ by interconnecting ITE, induction and professional development’ (OECD, 2011, p. 20).

Expanding upon these three key findings, the OECD’s report (OECD, 2011) drew attention to examples of ‘effective ITE practice’ from what were seen as successful education systems. These included the ‘holistic’ Finnish model of demanding academic standards for ITE programmes (including the requirement for a Master’s degree), the emphasis on practitioner research (Shanghai) – and the focus of this anthology, the use of Japanese lesson study.

The OECD recommendations summarised are broadly in line with the findings of numerous studies (Burn & Mutton, 2015; Darling-Hammond, 2006; Menter et al., 2010; Ure, 2010) at both national and transnational levels. This provides a robust evidence base on which teacher education policy can be effectively targeted at addressing the key issues (and dilemmas) faced when educating professional teachers to work in complex classrooms with a diverse range of student needs. A study on successful programmes in teacher education in the US (Darling-Hammond, 2006) identified coherence between coursework and the practicum experience, a strong core curriculum, an inquiry approach, school – university partnerships and assessment based on professional standards as key elements in the programmes, and similar findings have emerged from major studies in Europe (Burn & Mutton, 2015; Menter et al., 2010; Ure, 2010). These key elements or issues relate to the ongoing discourses about ITE presented above (European Commission, 2015; OECD, 2011).

In the following three ongoing prominent discourses on ITE, the practice orientation, the research orientation and professional learning through partnership will be further elaborated on. In research, policy documents and reports these discourses will often be presented as complimentary, or closely linked.² At the same time, different ideological agendas may result in different understanding and enactment of policies related to these issues (Beauchamp, Clarke, Hulme, & Murray, 2015); as already noted in our introduction, innovation in ITE has been hampered by its political sensitivities, meaning that ideological imperatives have consistently outweighed the consensus of researchers. Finally, these three discourses, or issues, will be discussed in relation to Lesson study as an approach to learning teaching in ITE.

The Practice Orientation

There is widespread acceptance of the need to increase the coherence between the education received by teachers and what actually happens in classrooms, with a consequential demand that the role of practical field-experience in ITE has to be re-evaluated in order to construct a sound professional identity (Musset, 2010). Many students experience a gap between theory and practice and find ‘theories’ irrelevant to professional development (Laursen, 2014). Darling-Hammond (2014) describes the ‘presumed divide’ between theory and practice as one of the core dilemmas of teacher education; an argument reinforced by the OECD’s report into teaching quality which recommended a shift away from ‘academic preparation’ in ITE programmes towards a balance of theory and practice, with more time practicing teaching in schools. This view has gained traction with the perception that ‘traditional’ university-based teacher education programmes are often a connection of unrelated courses lacking a coherent perception of teaching and learning. This perceived lack of coherence has led to persistent concerns about the fragmentation of clinical work and coursework, which has been a constant challenge in teacher education (Grossman, Hammerness, & MacDonald, 2009; Hammerness, 2012; Zeichner & Gore, 1990). As a way to move beyond this separation of course work and clinical experience Grossman et al. (2009) suggest to organise the curriculum around a set of ‘core practices’, defined as ‘high-leverage practices’. In focussing on these practices teacher educators ‘must attend to both conceptual and practical aspects associated with any given practice’ (Grossman et al., 2009, p. 278), and incorporate ‘pedagogies of enactment’ to the existing pedagogies of ‘reflection and investigation’ in teacher education. This approach further requires a reorganisation of curriculum and new thinking about the relationship between university courses and field placements.

The ‘practice orientation’ has been accelerated at a global level in recent years; as already noted, the OCED’s Building a High-Quality Teaching Profession encouraged national systems to refocus their ITE programmes towards ‘…a more appropriate balance between theory and practice’ (OCED, 2011, p. 20) – by which it meant a shift away from ‘academic theory’ towards more time in the classroom. However, as is frequently the case with such high-profile reports, the translation of recommendation into policy and practice can involve misinterpretation and misapplication.

Zeichner (2012) argues that caut...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1. International Changes and Approaches in Initial Teacher Education
• Chapter 2. An Introduction to Lesson Study
• Chapter 3. Lesson Study in ITE: A Family of Approaches
• Chapter 4. Whose Learning in ite Lesson Study? Gaining the Most from Lesson Study in Relation to Learning
• Chapter 5. The Role of Collaborative Planning: How to Use Joint Planning as a Learning Process in Lesson Study
• Chapter 6. The Role of Observation in ITE Lesson Study
• Chapter 7. Capturing Other Perspectives: Lesson Artefacts, Pupil Voice and Participatory Potential in ITE Lesson Study
• Chapter 8. Reflective Practice and the Lesson Study Process in Initial Teacher Education
• Chapter 9. Student-Teachers’ Written Reports About Their Own Learning Processes from Lesson Study
• Chapter 10. Tools for Helping Student-Teachers Learning the Complex Work of Teaching in Lesson Study Cycles
• Chapter 11. Lesson Study Partnerships in Initial Teacher Education
• Chapter 12. The Thorny Issue of Time
• Chapter 13. Normalisation Process Theory in ITE Lesson Study
• Chapter 14. The Wider Perspective on Lesson Study: Developing a Holistic View of Practitioner Development Through Pedagogic Literacy
• Chapter 15. The Future of Lesson Study in Initial Teacher Education
• Index