Lesson study, a Japanese form of professional development that centers on collaborative study of live classroom lessons, has spread rapidly in the United States since 1999. Drawing on examples of Japanese and U.S. lesson study, we propose that three types of research are needed if lesson study is to avoid the fate of so many other once-promising reforms that were discarded before being fully understood or well implemented. The proposed research includes development of a descriptive knowledge base; explication of the innovation’s mechanism; and iterative cycles of improvement research. We identify six changes in the structure and norms of educational research that would enhance the field’s capacity to study emerging innovations such as lesson study. These changes include rethinking the routes from educational research to educational improvement and recognizing a “local proof route”; building research methods and norms that will better enable us to learn from innovation practitioners; and increasing our capacity to learn across cultural boundaries.

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This paper features a case study of one US K-8 school district pioneering the use of ''lesson study,'' a teacher professional development approach adapted from Japan. The case explores events that occurred in the district over more than 4 years (Spring 2000-Fall 2004) as lesson study spread nationally and within the district. We document four categories of changes that occurred in the district's lesson study approach, and describe some of the early consequences of these changes as well as conditions that enabled the changes to occur. We argue that this case illustrates much of what we would hope to see in a maturing lesson study effort, and conclude that other US sites may need to go through similar changes, organize similar supports, and persist in their learning about lesson study to successfully adapt this model to their local contexts.

N LESSON study, teachers collaboratively plan, observe, and analyze actual classroom lessons, drawing out implications both for the design of specific lessons and for teaching and learning more broadly. Long the dominant form of professional development in Japan, lesson study has spread rapidly in the United States since 1999. Previous Kappan articles have praised lesson study's potential for improving instruction but questioned whether it might become one more short-lived fad. 1 Since 2000, we have followed the development of lesson study at Highlands Elementary School, one of the first U.S. schools to adopt the practice. Serving just over 400 K-5 students in an urban/suburban district in the western U.S., Highlands School provides both an "existence proof " that U.S. teachers can use lesson study to improve instruction and a window into the conditions needed for its success. 2

The authors comment on the article by Morris and Hiebert in three ways. First, they add thoughts about why improvement efforts often focus on teachers, rather than teaching. Second, they offer evidence from U.S. lesson study research that focus on teaching can improve both students’ learning and teachers’ learning. Finally, they suggest that the instructional products and common assessments advocated by Hiebert and Morris are not sufficient, and that they need to be accompanied by practice-based, collegial learning in which teachers build shared knowledge and commitments for the hard work of improvement. Their research indicates that lesson study focuses on teaching, but improves teachers as well, increasing mathematical knowledge and beliefs that support instructional improvement, as well as improving student learning.