Elsevier

Teaching and Teacher Education

Volume 34, August 2013, Pages 107-121
Teaching and Teacher Education

Teacher learning in Lesson Study: What interaction-level discourse analysis revealed about how teachers utilised imagination, tacit knowledge of teaching and fresh evidence of pupils learning, to develop practice knowledge and so enhance their pupils' learning

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.04.006Get rights and content

Highlights

  • LS focus on pupil learning (not teachers) fuels teacher disposition to learn.

  • LS group talk in role taps tacit knowledge reserves to improve micro-teaching.

  • Case pupils sharpen teacher understanding of proximal development needs.

  • LS helps teachers overcome classroom complexity and see pupils afresh.

  • Interaction-level discourse analysis of teacher talk makes teacher learning visible.

Abstract

This research examines what discourse interactions reveal about teacher learning in Lesson Study (LS) contexts as teachers plan and discuss research lessons.

LS group members combined social and cultural capital resources and vivid data from research lessons. This created motivating conditions enabling collective access to imagined practice and joint development of micro practices. Improvements in subsequent teaching, and pupils' learning are reported.

Iterative, collaborative LS processes enabled teachers to access tacit knowledge resources and remove filters (developed to cope with classroom complexity), unmasking hidden characteristics of pupils. This both challenged and informed teacher beliefs, motivating joint development of enhanced practices.

Introduction

The purpose of this research was to investigate how and what teachers learn in contexts of Lesson Study (LS). LS is a teacher learning process practised since the 1870s across Japan (Sato, 2008), the 1950s in China (Chen, 2011) and which since the 1990s has migrated across the Asia Pacific region (Lee, 2011), the US and Canada. It is now used in Europe, Africa and the Middle East (Dudley, 2012; Shimizu & Takuya, 2012).

LS has been reported extensively during the past 16 years in English language journals (C. Fernandez, 2002; C. Fernandez, Cannon, & Chokshi, 2003; M.L. Fernandez, 2004; Lewis, 1998; Lewis, Perry, & Hurd, 2004; Lewis, Perry, & Murata, 2006; Takahashi, 2005; Watanabe, 2002; Yoshida, 2002). It can be a formal demonstration-based practice transfer approach, but also exists as classroom action enquiry developing new practice knowledge (Chichibu & Kihara, 2013; Lo & Marton, 2012; Matoba, 2011; Tamura, Nakadome, Kuramoto, & Soga, 2011). This study focuses on the latter. This growing literature remains immature. While LS is associated with high performance (McKinsey, 2007; Mourshed, Chijioke, & Barber, 2010; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999; Perry, Lewis, Friedkin, & Baker, under review) and is currently enjoying global growth, its precise impact, while promising, remains unproven.

The international context for my research lies in outcomes of a national pilot project in England (2003–5) conducted by the author, which drew on evidence principally from Japan and the US, exploring the use of LS in the UK (Dudley, 2004, Dudley, 2011) and which prompted the research reported here. Elements of LS developed through this work are now informing international practice. These include two features reported here: ‘case pupils’, (Lee, 2011) and the use of teacher discourse as a window on teacher learning (Akita, 2012).

This research is the first to use interaction-level discourse analysis of teacher talk in LS to explore the patterns and modes of teacher learning that are revealed.

Lesson Study involves a group of teachers who want to improve aspects of the learning of their pupils, from underperforming groups to curriculum aspects that teachers feel could be taught more effectively. Having established this focus, the group researches what has worked elsewhere. (In Japan there is a wealth of teacher research arising from lesson studies upon which teachers draw). They then plan in detail a ‘research lesson’ (RL), which one of the group teaches while the others closely observe pupils' learning and annotate their copies of their RL plan. After the RL they compare what they have observed of pupils' learning with their predictions, refining their ideas and planning a further RL. After a cycle of three or so RLs the group clarifies what was learned that can inform their own practice and that of others. They share this with colleagues through short papers, presentations or by inviting them to observe the new approach in an ‘open house’ lesson.

Fig. 1 below sets out the LS process followed in this study developed by trialling and adapting models from international literature during my earlier pilot.

Teachers in my LS pilot reported experiencing profound, new learning experiences – commenting particularly on: (i) the safe context LS provides for teachers to experiment with teaching while also being highly accountable to improving pupils' learning; (ii) the value and benefits teachers derived from learning collaboratively; and (iii) on how LS processes enabled them to see their pupils in new ways based on detailed insights developed through focused classroom observation. These themes recurred constantly.

I was interested to find out why this might be and the study I report here examined how and what teachers learn in Lesson Study contexts and whether teaching practices were changed for the better through LS in meaningful and lasting ways that benefited pupil learning after their lesson studies were over.

Section snippets

Reviewed literature

In LS teachers seek to learn in collaborative groups from their classrooms. Classrooms have been found to provide powerful, practice-based contexts in which teachers learn to improve the ways they support enhanced pupil leaning (Cordingley, Bell, Rundell, Evans, & Curtis, 2004; Elmore, 2004; Guskey, 2002; Kazemi & Hubbard, 2008; Opfer & Pedder, 2011).In developing this research, I found sociocultural learning theory offered me a helpful lens with which to examine the collaborative,

Methodology

Because of the centrality of talk to teacher learning I analysed video recordings made by groups of teachers of themselves jointly planning and analysing RLs in order to throw light upon how and what they were learning. My pilot study had suggested that it was through these discussions that teachers revealed most evidence of:

  • a.

    Their knowledge of pupils, classes, content and pedagogy;

  • b.

    Opportunities created for ‘risk-taking’;

  • c.

    How they designed RLs to facilitate the learning of specific pupils;

  • d.

    How LS

Findings

While I address each research question here, the nature of my data also required me to explore interplay between what teachers drew upon (their knowledge and evidence) and how they used discussion to overcome problems this evidence often posed for them. Section 4.1 explores qualitatively how the teachers used knowledge and evidence as well as collaborative discourse to accommodate contradictory perceptions, explore these differences in understanding and then formulate new ideas. Section 4.2

Discussion

Teacher learning is the primary subject both of this study and its most important finding. Pupil learning is reported as an outcome of teacher learning. I will therefore confine this final discussion to teacher learning alone.

The features of interaction and collaboration in the work of these LS groups reveal how important is the building and use of social capital tools and resources amongst group members for creating conditions for teacher learning and also how the powerful ontogenetic will to

Conclusion

This study has trained a spotlight onto teacher learning co-constructed by groups of teachers through a process that generates co-constructed teacher knowledge and enables it to be distributed to, and fixed in, the practice knowledge and theoretical knowledge of individuals. From time to time the discourse analysis revealed evidence of this learning through learning point interactions which enabled several routes to be traced through periods of doubt about new ideas, denial or back-pedalling,

Note on funding

This research was funded through an award from the United Kingdom Economic and Social Research Council: Teaching and Learning Research Programme.

Acknowledgements

I thank Professor David Pedder for his helpful feedback and suggestions on drafts of this paper.

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