How Should Research Contribute to Instructional Improvement? The Case of Lesson Study

Abstract

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.

Teacher perspectives about lesson study in secondary school departments: a collaborative vehicle for professional learning and practice development

“…Consequently, it may not be attractive 2 in school systems that are hungry for quick-fix impacts, for example on examination results. Despite this, its use is growing and ever larger numbers of research investigations have explored its effectiveness in different contexts (Lewis, Perry and Murata 2006;Fernandez 2002;Fernandez, Cannon and Chokshi 2003;Lawrence and Chong 2010;Dudley , 2013). According to Lewis (2004, 19), teachers in Japan have identified seven pathways of improvement resulting from lesson study: 'increased knowledge of subject matter, increased knowledge of instruction, increased ability to observe students, stronger collegial networks, stronger connection of daily practice to long-term goals, stronger motivation and sense of efficacy, and improved quality of available lesson plans.'…”

Learning study: helping teachers to use theory, develop professionally, and produce new knowledge to be shared

“…According to Lewis et al (2006), lesson study 'encompasses a large family of instructional improvement strategies, the shared feature of which is observation of live classroom lessons by a group of teachers who collect data on teaching and learning, and collaboratively analyze it' (p. 3). Observed lessons are called 'research lessons'.…”

Using Social Network Analysis to Study How Collegial Interactions Can Augment Teacher Learning from External Professional Development

“…Case analyses have illuminated the critical conditions for forming such communities, including a shared goal for improvement (Scribner et al 2007), a commitment to opening up one's practice to others (Little 2002), and a strong alignment between the formal or designed social organization of schools and the actual pattern of collegial ties (Bidwell and Yasumoto 1997). These conditions, in turn, enable teachers to reconstruct their practice through repeated interactions around artifacts and representations of teaching practice and student thinking (Kazemi and Franke 2004;Little 2003), opportunities to observe one another engaged in the act of teaching (Lewis et al 2006), and routines for scaffolding interactions about teaching (Horn and Little 2010).…”