Understanding Preservice Teacher Skills to Construct Lesson Plans

This study examined preservice teachers’ (PSTs) capacity for lesson planning in a university-based teacher preparation program in the USA Participants (n?=?126) wrote lesson plans in three approaches: synthesis, creation, and modification. Findings indicate that PSTs who modified preexisting lesson plans produced better lesson plans than their peers and reported higher efficacy in their use of the lesson plan in their field experiences. This study supports the notion that the efficacy of first-year teaching lies more appropriately in the area of enacting curriculum than in the area of designing curriculum. With respect to career-long learning, PSTs’ abilities to do curriculum work are likely to improve, as they grow more familiar with students and existing excellent curricula over years. Although the study presents a snapshot of U.S. preservice teachers’ capacity for curriculum design, the findings may serve to inform the literature on the developmental aspect of curriculum design for teacher education systems across the world.     

英语口译教学中的课例研究

课例研究作为促进教师专业发展、加强学生课堂学习效果的有效途径,近年来在教育界引起了普遍关注,成为许多国家和地区教师有系统、有组织的合作教研活动.从课例研究中对于课堂实践进行设计—实施—反思的实质出发,探讨其在提高高校英语口译教学水平中的应用.课例研究是一个促使教师系统地对教学实践进行总结和反思的过程,通过课例研究,口译教师能够对教学方法、教学内容、课程设置、学生的学习和理解过程等关键教学环节进行更深入、更科学的分析,不断丰富自己的专业知识和教学实践能力.     

“同课异构”教学活动探析

"同课异构"活动的开展有助于提升教育质量、提高教学效益及教师专业成长。进行"同课异构"活动时,一方面应遵循开放性、真实性、创新性等原则的理性指引,另一方面在实践活动中应避免走入脱离目标过分求"异"、忽视特色轻"异"求"同"、不顾学情"标新立异"等误区。为推动"同课异构"活动有效开展,应进行集体备课,充分发挥教师群体智慧;积极反思,促进教师自我成长;集思广益,多种模式推动活动进行。     

Lesson study: an inter-professional collaboration approach for Educational Psychologists to improve teaching and learning

This paper describes an innovative use of Lesson Study (LS), an internationally used collaborative approach in which teachers develop their teaching knowledge and practices. It aimed to evaluate how EPs join teachers in LS teams, using working memory and other knowledge to inform the teaching of pupils with learning difficulties. The study uses a case study methodology to evaluate LS teams (three teachers and EP) in a primary, secondary and special school. The findings show how working memory knowledge is used in reviewing and planning research lessons, how the teams interact, including the teachers’ perceived EP contribution to the Lesson Study process. The paper illustrates the potential of an inter-professional LS study to embody collaborative reflective practice in order to improve the teaching of pupils with learning difficulties.     

The role of pupil voice as a trigger for teacher learning in Lesson Study professional groups

This paper focuses on the role of pupil voice as a trigger for teacher learning and for improving teaching quality. This is investigated in the context of Lesson Study (LS), a professional development model that can incorporate pupil voice into teachers’ collaborative reflections on lessons. Data are from two LS groups of mathematics teachers in London (one primary and one secondary school). Video-recorded pupil interviews and teacher discussions were transcribed. Episodes of teacher discussions were coded for reference to pupil input and subsequent impact on future plans. Qualitative analysis of discussions examined whether some pupils’ input was favoured over others’. Results are significant in pointing to LS as a mechanism for attending to pupil voice. In so doing, it is suggested that pupil input provided a challenge for teachers in their interpretations of pupil learning, evaluating lessons and planning, and in contributing to teacher learning from LS.     

跨界课例研究中的教师学习

目前我国中小学教师的学习大都停留在被专家灌输知识或同行低水平交流的状态,如何创设跨界学习情境,引发教师对自己思维和行为习惯的深度反思,形成新的对教育教学的理解和行动,是教师学习的一大难题。鉴于此,有必要从跨界学习的视角,探索教师在跨界课例研究中其学习是如何发生的。基于一个小组合作学习案例,分析了教师如何通过与外来学者合作,根据具体情境对理论进行再工具化,改进教案设计和教学实施,在提高学生学习素养的同时生成了自己新的实践性知识。研究发现,教师跨界学习的意义协商、视角再造、实践重构三个机制,对教师专业学习具有重要的指导意义。     

Engaging Prospective Elementary Teachers in Lesson Study

This paper discusses the ways in which teacher educators can effectively engage prospective teachers (PTs) in lesson study during mathematics methods courses. Evidence from this work suggests that engagement in lesson study provides PTs with opportunities to strengthen their knowledge about mathematics, students, and pedagogy. More specifically, the results demonstrated that lesson study helped PTs to engage in deep and thoughtful discussions about mathematics, reflect on their teaching, and make effective changes to their lessons that showed noticeable improvements in student learning. Recommendations from this work provide specific methods-course suggestions on the implementation of lesson study as a model for PTs' professional and practitioner development, including strategies and guiding questions that teacher educators can utilize to help deepen PTs' knowledge about mathematics, teaching, and student learning.     

Collaborative Practitioner Research: A Case of Lesson Study in a Small Jewish School

ABSTRACT

Lesson study is a form of professional development where a group of teachers identifies a problem of practice on which they would like to make progress in their teaching. Over an extended period of time, the teachers study the topic and plan a lesson together. One member then teaches the lesson while the others observe; the group reflects afterwards on student learning. The cycle repeats, building teachers’ professional knowledge and their shared views of pedagogy over time. In this article, we argue that lesson study is a collaborative form of practitioner research and we show how this is so by sharing an example of a lesson study cycle conducted in a synagogue school.     

现代教育技术条件下说课方法初探

说课在教学的诸多领域得到广泛应用,成为促进教师专业发展、教育智慧生成的有效途径.在现代教育技术条件下,说课的中介和形式都发生了新的变化,说课时除了体现常规说课的基本要求之外,还要突出现代教育技术的作用,更要利用现代教育技术提高说课艺术.     

Using Activity Theory to Examine How Teachers' Lesson Plans Meet Students' Learning Needs

How is lesson planning useful? This research study used Cultural Historical Activity Theory and intersubjectivity to answer this questions. This research explored to what extent teacher candidates' lesson plans (i.e., alignment among objectives, assessment, and instruction), and analyses of assessment data mediate their thinking about students' learning needs. Four to five daily lesson plans with corresponding videos and commentaries from 10 elementary school (K–6) teacher candidates were used in this study. Qualitative analyses revealed that teacher candidates seldom considered their students' learning needs and seldom anticipated how instructional activities facilitated students' thinking. One teacher candidate, however, used assessment data to consider students' learning needs and to plan future lessons to meet students' learning needs. The implication of research findings suggest that teacher education programs must improve in developing teacher candidates' skills of aligning lesson plan features and using assessment data as tools to mediate their thinking about students' learning needs.     

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

The lesson study approach is a systematic process for producing professional knowledge about teaching by teachers, and has spread rapidly and extensively in the United States. The learning study approach is essentially a kind of lesson study with an explicit learning theory—the variation theory of learning. In this paper, we argue that having an explicit learning theory adds value to lesson study, as the variation theory of learning serves as a source of guiding principles for the teachers when they engage in pedagogical design, lesson analysis and evaluation. Through the use of two Hong Kong learning study cases, one from each of the two major ways of conducting learning study, we demonstrate the power of variation theory in explaining and predicting the relationship between what has taken place in the classroom and what the learners learn, and subsequently identifying ways to improve student learning through promoting teacher professional learning in a learning study setting.     

Lesson Planning Practices of Special Education Teachers

This study reports the results of a survey of special education teachers regarding: (a) how special education teachers organize and develop their lesson plans, (b) which lesson plan components special education teachers include in their lesson planning activities and how each component is planned, and (c) what lesson plan components special education teachers recommend that beginning teachers include in written lesson plans. As indicated by the results, the majority of the special education teachers who participated in this study did not write out lesson plans for each lesson they taught. They indicated that, even though most of the planning prior to instruction was unwritten, it was often "consciously" planned, or planning was unnecessary because the component was performed by habit or instinct. A substan- tial majority indicated that they did not use any expert's lesson planning format, such as Hunter's (1984) or a format suggested in preservice teacher training. None of the 14 components regularly included in preservice lesson plans and instructional design models were written out by a majority of the teachers; only 3 of the 14components were written out by over one third of the respondents. Conversely, this study demonstrated that, although these teachers did not write out detailed lesson plans, they strongly recommended that beginning teachers do so. All 14 components were recommended by at least one third of the respondents, with 8 recommended by a majority. Limitations, questions for future investigation, and implications for teacher preparation are discussed.     

TPACK design scaffolds for supporting teacher pedagogical change

Many empirical studies show that teachers have difficulty designing technology-integrated lessons for student-centered learning. Supporting teachers to change their pedagogical practice is a challenge faced in teacher professional development for technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). This study describes how teachers’ conceptions of pedagogical change can be supported through the use of different kinds of TPACK design scaffolds—a meaningful learning rubric, lesson design heuristics and TPACK Activity Types. The impact of these design scaffolds on the TPACK confidence and lesson design confidence of 47 teachers and instructors who were attending a graduate course in educational technology were assessed through pre and post course surveys. Expert ratings of technology-integrated lesson plans designed at the beginning and end of the course were also used to determine the extent of pedagogical change enacted. It was found that these design scaffolds had positive effects on teachers’ TPACK confidence and were useful for helping the teachers to articulate pedagogical change in their lesson designs. Participants’ feedback for improving the TPACK design scaffolds as well as guidelines for using these to support pedagogical change through TPACK professional development programmes are discussed.

     

Enriching a collaborative teacher inquiry discourse: exploring teachers’ experiences of a theory-framed discourse in a Singapore case of lesson study

This paper explores how a learning theory enriched a collaborative teacher inquiry discourse where lesson study was adopted as the educational action research model to promote teacher professional development. Four Grade 9–10 biology teachers in Singapore drew from variation theory to collaboratively plan and teach new genetics content as part of teacher research. As a researcher-facilitator, I have drawn from the teachers’ experiences of infusing variation theory into their teaching practice, of developing their own theories of teaching and learning, and of developing student-focused pedagogies to highlight the roles variation theory played. These included providing concrete examples of patterns of variations teachers could use, increasing the teachers’ attention and sensitivity to students, and developing the teachers’ theoretical lens in their approach to teaching. Reflecting on the teachers’ experiences, I made an appeal for teachers’ development of theoretical lenses in teacher inquiry, and bridging of theory and research to teaching practice.     

课例研究对落实课程资源开发理念的价值探讨

课程资源开发理念只有切实落实到学科教学中,转化为教师具体的教学行为才能发挥其真正价值。而课例研究作为“实践教育学”的一个范例,是课程理念转化为教学行为的有效途径。以课例为载体研究课程资源开发,有利于澄清教学中课程资源开发的内涵,使开发行为具象化;能够生成课程资源开发的实践性知识,形成有示范性和操作性的实例;将课程资源开发置于循环研究系统中,提供了反思课程资源开发过程的空间;构建课程资源开发研究者与一线教师交流的平台与空间,促进教师成为研究者。     

刍议"研课"——对评课的超越和发展

研课作为促进教师专业发展的一种活动,其根本目的在于教师观念的改造,或实践性教学知识的生成。与评课所主张的标准不同,研课不存在固定标准,或者说,研课的标准是生成性的或框架性的。研课应事先确定主题并做好观课活动;要选择好研究的视角和着眼点;研课强调多主体参与和互动,强调自下而上就课论课。     

Using Community Artifacts to Support Novice Math Teacher Educators in Teaching Prospective Teachers

Despite the centrality of math teacher educators (MTEs) in teacher education, we know little about the nature of professional learning opportunities for MTEs to develop and enhance the knowledge needed to teach prospective teachers. Existing models for supporting MTEs in developing their knowledge and practice do not address how to prepare novice MTEs in initially learning to teach prospective teachers. We present a professional learning model we have been pursuing for supporting novice MTEs and the generation of and role for community artifacts, namely lesson plans, in that model. We outline the process by which we implement, analyze, and collectively revise lesson plans so that they are continually improved over time to serve as artifacts that better instantiate what members of the local community are learning about how to support novice MTEs through identification of their problems of practice. Finally, we problematize the model we are investigating and propose implications of this model and questions raised by our work with the goal of inviting further discussion about supporting novice MTEs.

     

Professional learning through the collaborative design of problem-solving lessons

This article analyses lesson study as a mode of professional learning, focused on the development of mathematical problem solving processes, using the lens of cultural-historical activity theory. In particular, we draw attention to two activity systems, the classroom system and the lesson-study system, and the importance of making artefacts instrumental in both. We conceptualise the lesson plan as a boundary object and use this to illustrate how professional learning takes place through the introduction of carefully designed artefacts that draw on teachers’ professional knowledge of potential student approaches, and to the nature of progression in problem-solving processes. We identify the roles of instrumentalisation and instrumentation in supporting professional learning as these artefacts are prepared for use before a lesson and as they are again used as catalysts for reflection in post-lesson discussions. These artefacts are seen to effectively facilitate the socially situated learning of all participants. We conclude that the design of artefacts as boundary objects that support teaching and professional learning in their respective activity systems may be fundamental to the success of lesson study as a collaborative venture.