Lien Diaz, Clea Fernandez, Alice Gill, Bill Jackson, Liping Ma, and Mariano Silva
Like any professional development process, lesson study faces a few challenges when it comes to its adaptation and implementation. An explanation of these challenges, based on the experiences of a panel of lesson study researchers and practitioners, helps to shed light on why the challenges exist and how they can be overcome. This paper focuses first on convincing decisionmakers that lesson study is worth the investment necessary to implement it well, and secondly, on the challenges of implementing lesson study in a meaningful and coherent way, rather than in a cursory way, to achieve a lasting impact on student learning.
In the midst of mounting pressures to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and increase test scores, lesson study-which is a measured, thoughtful professional development process-appears to be out of step with a mistaken perception that if we speed up teaching and learning we can meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals. Many educators and researchers know that a headlong rush into quick-fix strategies to raise test scores may not mean long-term success for students and schools.
One challenge for lesson study practitioners is to develop an understanding of how lesson study can further the underlying NCLB goal of improving learning for all student populations, and to share that understanding with schools, districts, and states in order to gain their support. To do so, lesson study advocates can highlight the ways in which lesson study is consistent with research studies showing that taking time to build a firm foundation for teaching and learning can lead to better student achievement and quicker gains later on. A firm foundation is likely not to come from test preparation kits, but rather from a purposeful focus on the content that is to be taught and the professional development of the teachers entrusted to teach it.
The National Research Council's report How People Learn (Bransford, 2000) underlines the importance of creating deep content understanding and connections among concepts in order to create student learning that lasts. In one of its findings, the report indicates that students' knowledge must be connected in order to be strong enough to endure and transfer:
"To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must: (a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, (b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and (c) organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application" (p. 16).
Connections that are made through a coherent approach to teaching and learning are outcomes of lesson study. Practitioners in the U.S. have also concurred that the process of planning research lessons for a lesson study cycle allows them to look closely at how students can learn the topic in depth and make connections among concepts across a whole unit and across other curriculum topics. By contrast, narrow teaching to tests and following a textbook page by page tend not to be methods that help students connect ideas.
In a report published by the U.S. Department of Education entitled Hope for Urban Education: A Study of Nine High-performing, High-poverty, Urban Elementary Schools (Dana Center, 1999), researchers found that when teachers in the high-performing schools targeted standards instead of teaching to the test, students performed better:
"Educators aligned instruction to the standards and assessments required by the state or the school district. Teachers and administrators worked together to understand precisely what students were expected to know and be able to do. Then, they planned instruction to ensure that students would have an excellent chance to learn what was expected of them."
The report also noted that teachers in the top-achieving high-poverty schools were supplementing and adapting their textbooks to help teach more closely to the standards. Similarly, lesson study is a process that can help teachers use and supplement their texts successfully to help students develop a deep understanding of content identified in state standards.
The practice of lesson study is consistent with the professional development finding in the Dana Center's report that an emphasis on creating time for teachers to work collaboratively on instructional issues was a common feature of the high-performing schools:
"School leaders created opportunities for teachers to work, plan, and learn together around instructional issues. Time was structured to ensure that collaboration around instructional issues became an important part of the school day and the school week."
Such collaboration can broaden and strengthen knowledge of content and learning, which in turn increases the possibility of providing a solid foundation for students. Teaching to tests tends not to encourage such sharing. Gaea Leinhardt, professor of education and senior scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, notes that collective knowledge is greater than any one individual's knowledge (Leinhardt, 1995), and for this reason, processes like lesson study, which encourage the sharing of knowledge among teachers, can help build that foundation.
During lesson study, we can come to understand how deep learning prepares students to make the connections that help them meet many goals and thus help teachers to slow down to achieve more. Understanding lesson study in this light-how it can build a firm foundation for deep learning as teachers develop a deeper understanding of learning goals, and analyze, adapt, and craft lessons to mesh with how children think and learn-can help to "sell" the process of lesson study even during a time when it seems "quick fixes" are what is favored. It is unlikely that anything "quick" will really improve teaching and learning, but using lesson study to build a firm foundation can help us move closer to the laudable NCLB goal of serving all students well (See conference presentation: Challenge: Pressures of NCLB and Standards-Based Education.)
Once lesson study is brought into a school or district, challenges still remain. Sustaining attention, cooperation, and support from school and district leaders can be difficult when these leaders are juggling multiple priorities-such as administrative, budgetary, or disciplinary concerns-that compete with the instructional priorities of the organization. But without school and district support, interventions will fail (Stigler and Hiebert, 1999). So how do improvement efforts, such as lesson study, maintain the needed support?
To begin, a good first step is to understand the kind of support necessary for lesson study to flourish within a school. In order for lesson study to be successful in improving teacher and student performance, principals must become a part of the process. They may see their role of instructional leader come to life when they participate both as a coach and as a teacher during planning, observation, and debriefing sessions. Their role as school administrator is also critical, as they will most likely need to alter the daily schedule to allow teachers time for this collaborative work. And finally, principals will also need to function as an advocate of lesson study and continue to "sell" lesson study to the district as a method that allows for the development of deep and lasting change. Inviting district supervisors and leaders to participate in lesson study is one of many important steps in maintaining district support.
These principal responsibilities are consistent with the National Association for Elementary School Principal's (NAESP) 2001 report, Leading Learning Communities: Standards for What Principals Should Know and Be Able to Do. The standards state that principals should create a true learning community in their schools in which teachers and the principal share in professional conversations about teaching (NAESP, 2001). Creating time, space, and purpose for those professional conversations is central to the lesson study process.
However, developing and maintaining such support-even with a principal who is a proponent of lesson study-is not easy when principals are feeling pressure to find "quick fixes" that might help pull schools out of failing categories. Most likely, overcoming this challenge can be accomplished only through the principal's taking a "no excuses" approach in which he or she takes equal responsibility with teachers for what happens in the classroom (Schlechty, 2001). Principals and teachers must be dedicated to the belief that lesson study is a way to improve teaching and learning, even if it will not be a "quick fix" for test scores. The "no excuses" policy challenges the principals and teachers to work together to remove barriers that inhibit lesson study and create a culture of lesson study within the school.
It is clear that having committed and effective principals is an important key to the growth and sustainability of lesson study. Therefore it is a great challenge to the lesson study community-those teachers, administrators, principals, and professional organizations that currently promote lesson study-to continue to develop a convincing base of research and evidence that will help increase the number of skillful committed principals who are needed to make lesson study work in this country. (See conference presentation Challenges in Leadership and Support for Lesson Study.)
As many readers may know, lesson study is a process that has been practiced in Japan for a number of years, and only after the results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 1995 (National Center for Education Statistics) did educators in the U.S. start to consider lesson study seriously. Since then, lesson study researchers in the U.S. have looked to Japan to understand the principles of lesson study and discovered that some of lesson study's core principles represent a significant "cultural change" for many American schools.
It is important to note that the notion of "cultural change" is not an attempt to adopt Japanese culture. Rather, the lesson study process itself contains principles and practices that may require some shifts in perspective among American educators in order to implement lesson study fully.
One example of a cultural change required for lesson study was expressed by a member of the Lesson Study Research Group (LSRG) at Teachers College, Columbia University e-mail list. This member contributed the following comment: "The teacher giving the lesson is uncomfortable about having the lesson observed by anyone outside of our [lesson-writing] team." This statement refers to the unique feature of lesson study in which a live lesson is taught to actual students and observed by the lesson-writing team as well as other invited guests, such as teachers, knowledgeable others, and administrators.
The point of the observation is to allow the teacher, the lesson-writing team, and the observers to deepen their understanding of student learning. But in American schools, having a lesson observed by multiple people is not a natural activity. In fact, such observations are usually synonymous with evaluations of the teacher. But with lesson study, the observation is not an evaluation of the teacher, but rather an opportunity to study the students, their reactions, and their ways of learning.
To help teachers become more comfortable with this type of observation, one possibility is for a teacher who is a lesson study advocate to occasionally offer to open his or her classroom to other teachers and share a regular classroom lesson. This type of sharing is less formal than observing a lesson study research lesson. It can provide a comfortable setting for discussion that reinforces the notion that observation should be focused on student learning rather than on teacher evaluation. All participating teachers may eventually volunteer to share lessons, and may even want to look upon this informal sharing as a type of "house cleaning" that encourages the teacher to do a little extra thinking and preparation on that particular lesson. (See conference presentation Lesson Study in Context.)
Once teachers become familiar with and comfortable with the observation and debriefing phases of lesson study, then attention can be focused upon the planning phase. The planning phase also differs considerably from many schools' planning efforts and involves a cultural change as well. The planning phase, or kyozaikenkyu in Japanese, is described in detail in the conference paper Prerequisites for Planning Lessons Effectively.
Other cultural adaptations that might be unfamiliar to U.S. schools include the notion of teachers as researchers, a willingness to share teaching strategies and lessons, a focus on what and how students learn, and regular teacher reflection time, to name a few. These are not Japanese concepts but are lesson study principles that are important to practicing lesson study purposefully.
Schools where principal and district support is present still face challenges with implementing lesson study. One key challenge is preparing students for the broad scope of standards and testing topics to which schools are being held accountable, but at the same time, developing deep content understanding. Often the textbooks that are selected to meet the testing achievement goals give very cursory treatment to each topic, so that all topics can be squeezed into the time span of one school year. The result may be a very shallow understanding of the topic matter.
Paterson Public School No. 2—a school with strong support from school leadership—has been implementing lesson study since the 1999-2000 school year and has found the challenge of broad standards to be one of the most difficult to align with its desire to provide students with a deep understanding of mathematics.
In 1998, the School 2 staff studied data from TIMSS (National Center for Education Statistics) that showed that top-achieving countries in mathematics tended to have a more coherent curriculum. In these countries, fewer topics were studied each year, allowing each topic to be studied in more depth. Compared to these findings, American curricula and standards were very broad, but not very deep (Schmidt, 1997).
For example, the state standards call for probability to be taught at every level, beginning with the first grade, whereas countries with more coherent curricula wait to introduce advanced topics such as probability until a later grade. In these countries, topics are introduced and developed carefully. Once in-depth knowledge of the topic is understood, it is phased out of the curriculum and later integrated into higher mathematics. For the most part, the same topics are taught in the top-achieving countries as are taught in the U.S., but are covered more deeply and integrated more cohesively, rather than being spread out superficially over every grade level.
Even with the broad standards expressed in the state standards, School 2 teachers saw the value of a deeper more coherent approach to teaching mathematics, and ultimately chose a new mathematics curriculum that explores fewer topics in greater depth: the Singapore Math textbook. With Singapore Math, the mathematics instruction at School 2 is textbook-focused and concentrates on the whole unit rather than individual lessons. Each unit allows time for students to develop deep understanding of mathematical concepts, and includes practice time and assessment activities. School 2 teachers are finding that this approach helps students make mathematical connections both within and across lessons and grades.
Combining lesson study with Singapore Math further increases the impact of the coherent curriculum by improving teacher content knowledge and instructional approaches. Both lesson study and Singapore Math are focused heavily on the mathematics content and how to present it. Lesson study provides time to consider deeply the instructional materials, the anticipated student responses, and any possible gaps in teacher content knowledge. School 2 teachers have found that lesson study has shifted the focus of their professional development from teachers to teaching, a shift which is supported by educational research, such as that of Stigler and Hiebert (1999).
While it is tempting to say that the solution to help students perform better and attain a deeper understanding of mathematics is to adopt a new more coherent textbook and practice lesson study, the solution is not that simple. That is where the challenge lies. Clearly, schools still have to work with the reality of broad standards, high stakes testing, and a rapidly approaching deadline for bringing all students to proficient levels. Given this reality, teachers at School 2 supplement Singapore Math with more traditional American textbooks, test preparation materials, and other resources. The result is still a sometimes broad and superficial treatment of some topics, but lesson study and the Singapore Math curriculum help to keep teachers' focus on developing key mathematics concepts and fostering connections among the concepts. (See conference presentation Challenges to Sustaining Lesson Study.)
The Lesson Study Research Group (LSRG) has worked with several lesson study groups. LSRG cautions that one core challenge of implementing lesson study is to develop a purposeful and coherent approach to implementation rather than simply "going through the motions" and falling into a rote process that lacks purpose. In the context of an environment that is supportive of lesson study, a purposeful and coherent implementation should aim to fulfill three objectives:
Objective One: Working on instruction that meets the needs of children.
The paper Improving the Quality of Lesson Study addresses the planning of instruction to meet the needs of children. In addition to the planning process, working on instruction also refers to the practice of implementing this instruction. Planning and practicing the instruction that meets the needs of children is a critical objective of purposeful and coherent implementation.
Objective Two: Learning from the process of working on instruction: the importance of reflection.
Reaching the first objective of working on instruction is not sufficient if it does not intersect with teachers' learning from the work. Several concrete steps can facilitate teachers' learning and internalizing what they have learned. One of the most important of these steps is to carve out regularly scheduled time for teachers to reflect about what they are learning. Regular reflection time helps to ensure that the learning is intentional and purposeful. Without regular reflection, learning opportunities can be lost. Liping Ma reinforces the importance of ongoing reflection and describes it as the "soil" in which lesson study must take root. Without this soil, the steps of lesson study, such as research lessons or lesson planning, simply wash away. Reflection is what nurtures and anchors the learning.
Other tools to facilitate the learning include (a) keeping minutes of each study group meeting to create an ongoing log of learning for future reference and to share with other groups, and (b) documenting the work that is done and the process that is used. Examples of documentation to support teacher learning include taking notes at planning meetings and lesson observations, video-recording meetings or lessons, saving lesson plan drafts, and writing year-end research reports. Reviewing one's own study group's documentation and studying that of other groups is another way to support teacher learning.
Objective Three: Drawing on the group's learning to contribute to a body of professional knowledge.
Lesson study has the potential of breaking the isolation of teachers, not just within lesson study groups, but as a whole educational community. A lesson study process can become more coherent and focused if participants actively contribute to and draw from a larger body of professional knowledge derived from lesson study. Sharing the outcomes of a group's lesson study can be accomplished by inviting colleagues to share in the process both informally and through formal open houses; disseminating reports and work samples to colleagues and over the Internet; presenting work at conferences; networking and communicating with others in the lesson study community through mail lists, online discussion groups, and special events; and seeking out other lesson study communities that are willing to share their learnings.
Tying Objectives Together.
The three objectives need not and should not be pursued in isolation. For example, the first two objectives of working on instruction and learning from the process can intersect in the study group's selection of a lesson study goal. Lesson study goals should be related both to the students' needs and to a topic about which the study group wants to learn. For example, if multiplication is a concept which students find difficult to grasp, as well as a concept that teachers find difficult to convey, the group's lesson study goal might be "to strengthen students' understanding and application of multiplication." By focusing all the group's lesson study efforts on pursuing this focused lesson study goal, both objectives can be satisfied. Instruction that meets the students' needs can be planned and practiced, and in the process, teachers can increase their understanding of the mathematics behind multiplication and effective ways to teach the concept.
Writing summary reports that reflect what was learned can also serve two objectives. The process of writing can help teachers reflect and make their learning more concrete (objective 2), and at the same time, it can be a way to share what was learned with a larger body of professionals (objective 3). Summary reports can synthesize many learnings that have occurred over time and can give both the writers and the readers of the reports new insights.
Ultimately all three of the objectives can intersect to form a coherent lesson study process. At their intersection might be several elements:
For visual aids to help understand this process, see the conference presentation Challenges of Implementing Lesson Study: How Can We Get from Here to There?. Chokshi and Fernandez (2004) also explore these and other concerns about implementing lesson study purposefully in the article Challenges to Importing Japanese Lesson Study: Concerns, Misconceptions, and Nuances.
This paper was first published online in July 2004.
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