by Patsy Wang-Iverson
With all the many promising professional development models to consider, some people have asked, why lesson study? In this paper, Patsy Wang-Iverson explores why lesson study is useful for educational improvement and addresses specific educational needs that it can meet. Wang-Iverson also discusses issues of looping, curriculum, and systemic reform that are necessary for lesson study to be most effective.
With all the many promising professional development models to consider, some people have asked, why lesson study? What makes lesson study so different from other forms of professional development? How does lesson study fit in with educational improvement? This paper examines these questions by discussing ways in which lesson study might address specific needs within our educational system, including the need for meaningful teacher collaboration, shared expectations for students, equitable access for students, and an integrated approach to systemic reform.
Meaningful Teacher Collaboration
Lesson study is a major landmark in my explorations, which began with the initial release of the data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 1996 (Research for Better Schools, no date; National Center for Education Statistics, no date; The International Study Center, no date). TIMSS revealed that more schools in higher-achieving countries than those in the United States have policies and practices in place that foster teacher collaboration and cooperation (Martin et al., 1999). Although there are American teachers who report they have opportunities to collaborate, such practices are not implemented systemically or systematically. These collaborations also frequently do not involve the actual observations of each other’s lessons.
An all-too-familiar characteristic of the American school is that teachers work in isolation. TIMSS quantified that isolation through the teacher surveys. Over 60 percent of the American mathematics and science teachers who participated in TIMSS reported they never had the opportunity to observe another colleague or to be observed (Gonzales, 2000). In Japan, by contrast, which consistently has ranked among the highest achieving countries in mathematics since the 1960s, teacher observation of colleagues is standard practice in elementary classrooms across the country (Yoshida and Fernandez, in press).
Researchers of Japanese education have described in rich detail the core of Japanese professional development, Jugyokenkyu, which has been translated as “lesson study” (Stigler and Hiebert, 1999; Lewis, 2002; Yoshida and Fernandez, in press). However, the word “lesson” in the Japanese context encompasses far more than our usual definition of the word, which is limited to a description of what is taught during a class period. Despite its name, lesson study is not about studying a lesson in order to make a perfect lesson. Rather, it is a professional development process in which teachers systematically examine their practice in order to become more effective instructors (Chokshi, 2002, p. iii), and teacher collaboration and collegiality are central to this model.
What Makes Lesson Study Different
Examining practice through teacher collaboration is not a new idea in the U.S. Study groups, design teams, inquiry groups, peer groups, and collaborative teams are all methods by which teachers can work together to improve their practice (Wells, 1994). While these methods are not as widely practiced here as is lesson study across Japan, they do share many similar principles and characteristics with lesson study. They all seek to develop teachers who meet the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards’ five core propositions: (1) are committed to students and their learning; (2) know the subject content they teach and how to teach it; (3) are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning; (4) think systematically about their craft; (5) learn from experience; and (6) are members of learning communities of practice (NBPTS, 1989).
How is lesson study different from these other collaborative activities? Lesson study makes teacher collaboration concrete and focuses on a specific goal: better understanding of student thinking in order to develop lessons that advance student learning. This collaborative work goes beyond meeting together outside the classroom, but to working together in the classroom itself. Lesson study offers teachers and administrators an opportunity to develop consensus on the types of students they want to produce. They can set an overarching goal for all students and work toward that goal by focusing on something concrete that impacts both teaching and learning: the collaborative development of a lesson, aligned with the goal.
Lesson study focuses not just on student work, but students working. One teacher, Sylvia Kendzior, found that lesson study’s focus on students working provided the substance she was looking for in professional development. In the acknowledgments section of Catherine Lewis’s Lesson Study: A Handbook of Teacher-Led Instructional Change (2002), Kendzior is quoted as saying, “People are always telling teachers to reflect. But they never tell us what to reflect about. Finally some substance!”
Through lesson study, the classroom becomes the teachers’ laboratory for continuous improvement of teaching and learning. In this manner, lesson study may sound similar to action research (North Central Regional Education Laboratory, n.d.), but there is one major difference. Working with others is optional in action research, whereas lesson study is based upon a collaborative and cooperative approach. In lesson study, teachers learn more content and develop better insight into student thinking from each other in the context of what occurs in the classroom.
Developing Shared Expectations
We speak of alignment of curriculum and instruction with standards, but the reality is that classrooms in too many U.S. schools have little in common. Teachers of the same subject frequently teach different topics, and they don’t share common expectations for their students’ knowledge and performance. As students in middle school move from class to class, they experience vastly different philosophies and expectations, making their learning experiences inconsistent and confusing (Wilson and Corbett, 2000).
Lesson study can serve as a catalyst for enabling teachers and administrators to arrive at a shared understanding of specific actions and expectations to help raise the minimum level of learning for all their students. An example is provided in the conference paper Developing Effective Use of the Blackboard through Lesson Study where, through years of collaboration, teachers have arrived at a common set of expectations for students that are clearly articulated.
During my visit to Japan in the summer of 2001, as I visited schools in different prefectures, I noticed a common student practice of using a different colored pencil to record correct solutions when their original solutions were incorrect. This simple strategy makes it possible for teachers and students to understand students’ initial thinking and can later serve as a study guide. When I asked about this observation, I was told that this was a practice that was spread across schools through the mechanisms of lesson study. This simple strategy is an example of how lesson study, when widely implemented, can help develop common expectations for students while also helping students develop effective learning strategies.
Improving Access and Equity
Lesson study is a natural fit with the No Child Left Behind legislation (U.S. Dept. of Education, 2001). If we truly are to leave no child behind, we need to rethink familiar practices we currently consider to be immutable. Lesson study could help us wrap our minds around different ways of thinking and working.
Despite the reputation of the U.S. as the greatest democracy on earth, our schools currently do not provide students with equitable access to learning. We have one of the largest achievement gaps between the top one-third of schools and the bottom one-third of schools in countries that participated in TIMSS (Martin et al., 2000). Is there a link between our large achievement gaps and our practice of sorting students into different content beginning as early as the elementary grades—a practice most other countries do not do so early or so dramatically? In his presentation at the kickoff of the Department of Education Secretary’s Math Summit, Grover “Russ” Whitehurst cited data showing that sorting of students into different content is harmful to low performing students and not helpful to high performing students. He suggested that perhaps it is time to consider the detracking of students through the eighth grade (Whitehurst, 2003).
A principal privately suggested to me that the reason we sort students into different mathematics content is because we don’t know how to teach students who are grouped heterogeneously and exhibit a range of performance. Why are we not able to help all our students reach a minimum level of competency? Why do we sort our eighth graders into those who are and are not “cognitively” ready to learn algebra, while other countries focus on helping all their eighth graders learn algebra and geometry? Lesson study, which builds upon teachers’ shared knowledge and insight, supported by research, can help us overcome our own cognitive barrier concerning students’ ability to learn.
Lesson Study Cannot Work Alone
Lesson study alone, however, is not sufficient for systemic improvement. In other countries teachers use additional practices to deepen their content knowledge.
Looping Practices
Unlike in the U.S., where a teacher could spend over 30 years teaching the same grade, teachers in other countries, over the course of their career, are expected to teach different grade levels. In doing so, they acquire direct experience with and knowledge of what students should learn in different grades. Many other countries practice what in this country we call “looping,” where students and teachers move through the grades together. Internationally, 43 percent of fourth graders and 25 percent of eighth graders stay with a teacher just one year (Martin et al., 1999). Although there is talk of “looping” in the U.S., it is not practiced widely. In this country, it is the norm (87 percent of fourth graders and 88 percent of eighth graders) to spend just one year with a teacher. In the Czech Republic, students stay with the same teacher for up to four years. The mathematical prowess achieved by students who learn mathematics with one teacher over four years has been documented in the U.S. (National Research Council, 2000).
Chinese teachers deepen their understanding of mathematics by learning from colleagues, learning from their students, solving problems, studying teaching materials intensively, and teaching “round-by-round”—teaching grades one through four (for elementary teachers) or grades five through eight (for middle-school teachers). By teaching all these grades, teachers attain a better understanding of the continuum of the mathematics they teach; they know what students have learned in previous grades and are able to prepare students for learning mathematics in future grades (Ma, 1999).
A Concise and Coherent Curriculum
American practitioners sometimes question the utility of lesson study because of the intense scrutiny paid to a single lesson. They ask: How can we spend so much time on one example when there is so much else to teach? How can a lesson study process work in the face of curriculum and standards that have been characterized by TIMSS researchers as “a mile wide and an inch deep” (Schmidt, n.d.; Valverde et al., 2002)?
In Japan, lesson study is perhaps more viable because the curriculum is focused on fewer topics than typical U.S. curricula. For the sake of comparison, consider that a science topic such as pendulums might require 13 to 14 lessons in Japan (Lewis, 2002, p. 76). During these lessons, students have the opportunity to (1) decide what variables they need to investigate, (2) design and conduct the experiments, and (3) frequently repeat their experiments to test the validity of their findings. These processes are similar to experimental procedures followed by scientists. In the U.S., that same topic may be covered in one class period to make time for other required topics. Under which circumstance do we think students develop a deeper understanding of pendulums?
Attempting to implement lesson study without first tackling the problem of an overstuffed curriculum can result in teacher frustration and the conclusion that lesson study “doesn’t work.” Alternatively, adopting a concise and coherent curriculum makes it easier for teachers and administrators to implement lesson study in a deep and meaningful way.
Lesson Study and Systemic Reform
Lesson study offers a means of helping teachers and administrators learn how to leave no child behind. This form of professional development can help teachers reach a common understanding of student thinking, determine a common set of expectations for student work and achievement, and collaboratively develop a powerful array of strategies to move students to higher levels of understanding and accomplishment. Still, lesson study alone is not sufficient. Unless we pay attention to the way we view children, utilize practices to support lesson study, and provide a curriculum that is coherent and concise, lesson study could become yet another study in frustration for school communities.
Lesson study should not be viewed as just another program to be added to a potpourri of professional development opportunities; neither should it be viewed as a replacement activity. Rather, lesson study can become the foundation of site-based professional development, which treats teachers as professionals and builds their capacity for lifelong learning. It can help integrate the variety of professional development activities, courses, conferences, and workshops that teachers attend individually or in groups, and which, up until now, have not provided much synergy (Figure). Lesson study can serve as the means by which teachers can share the knowledge they gain from their various professional development experiences and channel them into the collaborative research lessons they develop and then teach while assessing student learning and understanding.
Why lesson study? If we believe in W.E. Deming’s principle that everyone wants to do excellent work, then everyone needs to be supported in his/her search for excellence in a collaborative manner. The final beneficiaries will be the students; as a Japanese teacher expressed simply, “students improve when teachers improve.”
References
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