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.     

What is successful adaptation of lesson study in the US?

This paper features a case study of one US K-8 school district pioneering the use of “lesson study,” a teacher professional development approach adapted from Japan. The case explores events that occurred in the district over more than 4 years (Spring 2000–Fall 2004) as lesson study spread nationally and within the district. We document four categories of changes that occurred in the district’s lesson study approach, and describe some of the early consequences of these changes as well as conditions that enabled the changes to occur. We argue that this case illustrates much of what we would hope to see in a maturing lesson study effort, and conclude that other US sites may need to go through similar changes, organize similar supports, and persist in their learning about lesson study to successfully adapt this model to their local contexts.     

Understanding Teacher Educators and Their Pre-Service Teachers through Multi-Media Case Studies of Practice

The challenges facing those who seek to prepare mathematics teachers are well established in the literature. Most of the research to date has focused on the perceptions and understandings of pre-service teachers, but not on the perceptions and understandings of teacher educators. In this study, we explore how four teacher educators understand their pre-service secondary teachers as the pre-service teachers attempt to make sense of teaching through the investigation of a multimedia case study of practice. We found that the teacher educators adopted two different implementation strategies: one strategy tended to be open-ended and exploratory; the other was more focused on the teacher educators' goals of anticipating student understanding and developing mathematical content knowledge for teaching. We also found that, in using the case study, teacher educators elicited pre-service teachers' thinking about the complexities of the teacher's role in small group work, about the value of explicitly revealing the teacher's reflections on the lessons, about the role of planning and preparation, and about the limits of pre-service teachers' abilities to understand and appreciate students' thinking and to extend lesson ideas. Both teacher educators and their pre-service teachers gained perspectives on the role of a teacher's mathematical content knowledge. These results imply that multimedia case studies of practice can serve as vehicles for revealing the knowledge and practice of teacher educators, as they engage in supporting the professional development of pre-service teachers.     

Lesson study in prospective mathematics teacher education: didactic and paradidactic technology in the post-lesson reflection

This paper presents a detailed analysis of the post-lesson reflection, carried out in the context of eight cases of lesson study conducted by teams of Danish, lower secondary prospective teachers and their supervisors. The participants, representing different institutions, were all new to the lesson study format. Nevertheless, it is demonstrated how their interaction shape the development of discourse about mathematical learning. The anthropological theory of the didactic is employed as the theoretical approach to analyse the mathematical and primarily didactical praxeologies developed and discussed during the meetings. The study investigates what happens when lesson study, a well-established Japanese “system” for professional teacher development, is transposed to another educational and cultural context, with the aim of enhancing prospective teacher learning during the practicum of a teacher education programme. The findings highlight significant different positions in the discourse during the post-lesson reflection. Specific practice-related knowledge is developed, to the benefit of prospective teachers, educators and researchers alike. This kind of knowledge is of interest and concern to the whole profession of mathematics teachers and the analysis adds to our insight into the potential of lesson study in prospective education as a meeting place where pertinent actors contribute to the expansion and dissemination of shared professional knowledge.     

LESSON STUDY IN A METHODS COURSE: CONNECTING TEACHER EDUCATION TO THE FIELD

Through growing formative research, lesson study has emerged as a powerful practice that affects teachers' practical analysis of learning and teaching. Such research, however, also recognizes challenges to its implementation. In a methods course, lesson study has the potential to provide valuable links between teacher education and practice. In this article the author examines the essential factors in the implementation of lesson study in methods courses for inservice teachers and considers how collaboration, critical field observations, and the practice of teacher reflection emerge from the practice of lesson study. Lesson study challenges and methods of addressing these also are discussed.     

Initiating education reform through lesson study at a university in Indonesia

This paper analyses the issues involved in promoting lesson study in an Indonesian university, based on a case study of the Faculty of Mathematics and Science (FMIPA) of the State University of Yogyakarta. Five points are discussed. First, conducting lesson study with schools revealed that the faculty managers noticed the ignorance about lesson study in FMIPA and decided to conduct lesson study by themselves to learn more. Second, despite using a didactic teaching approach initially, more faculty members began using group work in their lessons. Third, despite the emphasis on the importance of observing students' learning realities, most faculty members focused on teaching methodology. Fourth, in terms of reflection, they could be classified as evaluation‐minded in order to be critical about the observed lessons, and learning‐minded to appreciate the observed lessons. Fifth, the strong involvement of managers is necessary to develop lesson study as a daily teaching and learning practice.     

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.     

Teacher collaboration: 30 years of research on its nature,forms, limitations and effects

ABSTRACT

This article reprises and reflects on 30 years of the author’s work on teacher collaboration. The distinctive nature of this work has not been in making a case for teacher collaboration in terms of its benefits for students, teachers, or educational change. These arguments are widely available elsewhere. Rather it has examined ways of collaborating that are available to teachers, how formal or informal collaboration should be, how collaborative efforts can be misused or misdirected, and what factors must be considered when deliberately designing teacher collaboration so it will have the most beneficial effects. The article discusses the explanatory and strategic power of three concepts in particular—contrived collegiality, professional capital, and collaborative professionalism. Conclusions are drawn about next steps for educational research in terms of establishing clear typologies of teacher collaboration in relation to their impact and appropriateness in different circumstances.     

Fostering teacher community development: A review of design principles and a case study of an innovative interdisciplinary team

To deal with recent reforms and the accompanying complexity of work in secondary education, ongoing collaboration between teachers has become more important. A community is seen as a promising learning environment to support and embed collaboration into the culture of the school. However, community theory for the design of teacher communities seems underdeveloped. Therefore, this study aims to formulate a set of design principles to foster the development of teacher communities in secondary education. The set of design principles is based on a review of literature, as well as on a best-practice case. The case study was used to validate design principles from the literature in the target context. The resulting design principles were based on context-intervention-mechanism-outcome logic that takes into account the context-dependency of interventions as well as the mechanisms that help with understanding of how interventions produce certain outcomes. Implications for practice relate to ownership and co-design of the arrangement. The set of design principles provides a practical basis for teachers and administrators aiming to facilitate community building in their school. Future research is recommended on testing the effectiveness of the arrangement in the target context by means of a multiple case study.     

Roles of a teacher and researcher during in situ professional development around the implementation of mathematical modeling tasks

Partnership with teachers for professional development has been considered beneficial because of the potential of collaborative work in the teacher’s own classroom to be relevant to practice. From this perspective, both teachers and researchers can draw on their own expertise and work as authentic partners. In this study, we address the need for such collaboration and focus on how a teacher and a researcher performed their roles when collaboratively implementing mathematical modeling tasks within a context of in situ professional development. Using multi-tier design-based research, as a framework, a researcher worked in a teacher’s classroom to implement a series of research-based mathematical modeling activities. A broad corpus of data from this interaction was analyzed, including audio recordings of interviews with the teacher, video recordings of three mathematical modeling lessons, researcher field notes and journal reflections, instructional materials, and students’ written work using the principles for designing activities for teachers. The emerging roles and relationships between the teacher and the researcher were documented, as (1) the researcher implemented the professional development, (2) the teacher shared her concerns, (3) the researcher responded to the teacher’s challenges, and (3) the teacher reflected on student development. As a case study of collaboration, the participants’ roles and strategies to overcome challenges and achieve shared objectives can benefit teachers and researchers who plan to collaboratively implement modeling in the classroom. The study supports the value and viability of this form of in situ professional development, indicating that significant changes in teachers’ thinking about their students’ mathematical model development can occur in relatively short periods of time.     

Teachers talking: the role of collaboration in secondary schools in Bangladesh

Teacher collaboration and support given from one teacher to another, focused on improving teaching and learning in the classroom, are notable by their absence in secondary schools in Bangladesh. This article identifies a number of constraints to developing a collaborative culture including the difficulty of the curriculum, the perceived low ability of many students, the teachers' own educational background and contextual factors which influence teachers' motivation. It suggests that informal collaboration for mutual support has the potential to increase teacher motivation but that this will only be achieved through building more collaborative ways of working through formal programmes grounded in classroom observation. It questions the validity for Bangladesh teachers of the model of teacher development programmes focused on teacher collaboration which emphasise teaching the ‘perfect’ lesson and suggests that without attention to student learning such programmes are unlikely to lead to increased collaboration or improved teacher practice in schools.     

Teachers as Designers of Learning Environments

Abstract

This study examined how six Singapore teachers approached the design and implementation of a unit of work (topic) to demonstrate exemplary classroom practices that engage learners and use ICT in knowledge-generative rather than presentational activities. After a reflection and feedback session on the first lesson observation involving the researcher and the teacher, the teacher redesigned the lesson to enhance ICT use and involve students more actively in their learning. Our study revealed that there is a difference between students' physical engagement and cognitive engagement in a task and that the teacher, as a designer of the learning environment, needs to make explicit the cognitive processes involved in using the tool to ensure students' effective use of ICT. The teachers' understanding of what constitutes effective learning and their roles in students' learning determine how they design the learning environment. In essence, it is the teacher's skill in managing the “tripartite” partnership of IT tool, learning task, and teacher support that brings about higher levels of student engagement.     

Professional development of mathematics teachers toward the facilitation of small-group collaboration

Collaborative work in small groups is often a suitable context for yielding substantial individual learning outcomes. Indeed, small-group collaboration has recently become an educational goal rather than a means. Yet, this goal is difficult to attain, and students must be taught how to learn together. In this paper, we focus on how to prepare teachers to become facilitators of small-group collaboration. The current case study monitors a group of six prospective teachers and their instructor during a one-semester course. The instructor was a skilled mathematics teacher with strong beliefs about what is entailed in establishing a mini-culture of learning to learn together and about how to facilitate student group work in problem-solving situations. We describe the learning path followed by the instructor, including the digital environment. The findings show that by the end of the course, the students became more competent facilitators of learning to learn together.     

Teacher collaboration in the context of the Responsive Classroom approach

This mixed‐method study examined characteristics and predictors of teacher collaboration. Limited research exists that describes the characteristics of teacher collaboration, and surprisingly little work explains the ways in which teaching experience and teachers’ perceptions of the school environment influence teacher collaboration. Questionnaire data were collected from a sample of 118 elementary school teachers in six schools in a northeast urban school district, and interviews were conducted with administrators in each school. Three schools were in their second year implementing the Responsive Classroom ^® (RC) approach, and three schools were comparison schools. Teachers reported collaborating approximately once or twice per month, generally with fellow grade‐level teachers about student‐centered topics. Teachers in RC schools reported more frequent formal collaboration than comparison school teachers. In regards to predicting teacher collaboration, teachers who used more RC practices and/or resources reported collaborating more, valuing collaboration to a higher degree, and perceiving greater involvement in school decision‐making, controlling for whether they taught at a RC school. Also, teachers’ perceptions of the school environment related positively to teacher collaboration. The current study adds to the understanding of teacher collaboration and its antecedents, contributing uniquely to the literature on how a school‐wide educational initiative is associated with teachers’ perceptions of their school environment as well as their collaborative behaviors and beliefs.     

Developing mathematics teacher knowledge: the paradidactic infrastructure of “open lesson” in Japan

In this paper, we first present a theoretical approach to study mathematics teacher knowledge and the conditions for developing it, which is firmly rooted in a systemic approach to didactic phenomena at large, namely the anthropological theory of the didactic. Then, a case of open lesson is presented and analysed, using this theoretical approach, to show how the format of open lesson contributes to the construction and diffusion of didactic knowledge in the community of mathematics teachers in Japan. The basic idea of this format is that teachers from other schools are invited to observe a class taught by a teacher then participate in a discussion session with him on the details of the lesson. For the case study, we analyse the lesson plan prepared for an open lesson, the observed lesson and the teachers’ discussion. As a result, an open lesson session has been described as a specific form of post-didactic practice related directly to an actual observed lesson, and aiming specifically at elaborating the theoretical aspects of teacher’s didactic practice in the lesson and beyond it.     

At the bridging point: tutoring newly arrived students in Sweden

In Sweden, tutoring in the mother tongue is a special support measure primarily intended for newly arrived students to facilitate their transition into the Swedish school system. Tutoring is premised on the collaboration between the class teacher, responsible for subject-related expertise, and the tutor, who contributes with knowledge of the student’s mother tongue and previous context of studies. In this case study of class teachers’ and mother tongue tutors’ conditions for collaboration at a multi-ethnic primary school, six mother tongue tutors and six class teachers were asked about the purpose of their work, how it was organised, and what could be done to improve working conditions. Interviews with head teachers, and data on work organisation from observations, document study, and participation in meetings for a period of one and a half years supplemented the teacher interviews. The analysis focuses on whether tutors and teachers belong to the same or different Communities of Practice, based on shared concerns and opportunities for collaboration, as well as looking at the relative positioning of languages and teaching roles. Findings suggest that the degree of collaboration between tutors and teachers was not sufficient to allow tutoring to function in the way it is envisaged by national steering documents. Tutoring was instead based on the tutors’ own knowledge of the subjects they taught. Recruitment of suitable tutors was difficult. However, conditions for collaboration and more effective tutoring in the schools could be improved with relatively simple support structures at the level of the municipality.     

Building an indigenous learning community through lesson study: challenges of secondary school science teachers

Universalists believe that indigenous knowledge should not be studied since it excludes non-indigenous people. A qualitative method was used to explore the impact of lesson study on a science teacher at a secondary school. The research indicated that lesson study has positive impacts on teachers professionally by improving their science content knowledge, developing their teaching strategy and skill, enhancing their interest in working collaboratively, and creating a sense of an indigenous paradigm. The four categories of impact are interrelated and mutually influential. Through a lesson study, a relationship of mutual trust is well established in an indigenous learning community.     

Developing a Data-Driven Assessment for Early Childhood Candidates

ABSTRACT

Decision-making is essential for the work of teaching. Preservice teachers must learn to leverage knowledge about young readers’ strengths, needs, and interests in order to plan and teach guided reading lessons skillfully. However, limited research examines preservice teachers’ decision-making based on what they know about individual children. In this qualitative case study, we report findings from 12 preservice teachers enrolled in a reading methods course who used teacher knowledge to inform their teaching decisions for guided reading lessons with Kindergarteners. Findings reveal how participants used knowledge of learners to make planning as well as in-the-moment teaching decisions. The data show that most of these decisions were lesson planning decisions about text selection and word solving strategies, indicating that participants were beginning to engage in responsive teaching strategies. This study makes a new contribution to early childhood teacher education literature by underscoring the significance of learner knowledge in the context of authentic teaching practice while learning to teach guided reading to young children.     

An Exploration of the Use of Multimedia Cases as a Reflective Tool in Teacher Education

Multimedia cases are perceived to be a means of bridging the gap between theory and practice in teacher education. However, little is known about how prospective teachers actually learn with these cases. In this paper, we examine how multimedia cases can stimulate reflective thought among preservice teachers. Gestalt psychology is employed as a theoretical lens to examine how seven preservice teachers work with a multimedia case. Data were collected by means of audiotaped work-aloud protocols, interviews and questionnaires. Results indicate that preservice teachers remain at low levels of abstraction of their ideas about teaching as a result of case examination. Directed assignments and collaboration among prospective teachers were a useful, but not always necessary, means of stimulating discussion on the multimedia case. The study leads to the conclusion there is still much to be learned about how prospective teachers interact with multimedia case, particularly about how such cases might stimulate reflective practice.