Spotlight Sessions – Details
Spotlight Sessions
At the WALS conference, we will host a number of Spotlight Sessions by esteemed researchers and practitioners from the worldwide Lesson Study community. Below, you find the titles and names of people involved. We will add more information shortly.
MONDAY
(1) Lesson Study in Initial Teacher Education
Sharon Dotger (USA, Chair)
Siebrich de Vries (Netherlands)
Sui Lin Goei (Netherlands)
Nellie Verhoef (Netherlands)
Jongsung Kim (Japan)
Kyoko Isshii (Japan, Discussant)
This session will describe how lesson study is used in initial teacher education across countries, subject areas, and with attention to various grade levels. Panelists will overview their own work in this area, discuss opportunities for future practices and research, as well as their processes for addressing challenges. The session will be relevant to teacher educators who are already using or who would like to use lesson study in their programs and to classroom teachers who are lesson study practitioners or who work with candidates during their teacher preparation.
Presentation 1
Learning Recovery and Innovation for Future Education: Design and Practice in School as Learning Communities
Emeritus Professor Manabu Sato, University of Tokyo, Japan
Children were the largest victims of COVID-19 and were deprived of their human right to learn due to prolonged school closures and restrictions on learning. This learning loss has caused them to lose hope for their present and future well-being. The pandemic has also accelerated the pace of the fourth industrial revolution, widening the gap between the rich and poor, and the exploding education market has put public education at risk. In addition, the Russian military invasion of Ukraine has created a threat of nuclear war and global economic stagnation. In response to the multilayered crisis, how can the School as Learning
Community (SLC) school reform defend democratic education and promote innovation in learning for children who will be the protagonists in this new phase of society? This paper will compare the responses to the pandemic in Japanese SLC schools and those of other Asian countries and explore some characteristic features of further innovation in learning and the structure of the dilemma faced by teachers. It also considers the roles that SLC leaders should play in school reforms to promote educational resilience and sustainability. The following issues are discussed: (i) the priority of sharing a vision in reform for constructing a learning and caring community, (ii) integration of two strategies of disruptive innovation and sustainable innovation, and (iii) the significance of democratic autonomy and the professional learning community in public schools.
Presentation 2
Are we listening?: Exploring listening pedagogy in classrooms in building a caring culture in schools
Emeritus Associate Professor Christine Kim-Eng Lee, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Listening is the basis for dialogue and development of a caring community (Sato, 2017). While the idea is appealing to many, the practice of listening to pedagogy is difficult to implement in countries beyond Japan, especially in contexts where teaching is mainly telling rather than listening. Rinaldi (2012) considers school “to be first and foremost a “context of multiple listening,” involving the teachers and children, individually and as a group, who should listen to each other and themselves. This concept of a context of “multiple listening” overturns the traditional teaching–learning relationship. This study focuses on the following
questions: (i) Why do we need to listen to and what is listening? (ii) What is the pedagogical practice in the classroom? It will explore its implementation in a Singapore school and examine the perceptions of Singapore teachers towards listening pedagogy, the challenges they face in making a fundamental shift in their pedagogy, and the impact on them and their children (Choy, Lee et al., 2021).
Presentation 3
Collaborative Learning for Creating Democratic Classrooms
Professor Yoshiko Kitada, Saitama University, Japan
Democracy has become a threat worldwide in recent years. It is worth reaffirming that one of the key philosophical backgrounds of School as Learning Community is “democracy.” By quoting Dewey, Sato emphasized that democracy in this context is not about political procedures, but about “a way of associated living” in which diverse ways of thinking and living are respected and an individual’s right to learn is guaranteed (Sato, 2006). The School as Learning Community employs small group learning approaches, often called “collaborative learning,” to create democratic classrooms. According to Davidson and Major (2014), there has been a growing interest in small-group learning approaches in education since the 1960s. The most representative approaches are “cooperative” and “collaborative”, but it is not easy to distinguish between the two. Many countries around the world, including Japan, seek to modernize their education systems by adapting some small group learning approaches; however, these approaches do not necessarily contribute to democracy. In fact, many teachers use small group learning approaches to teach the standard curriculum, which accelerates competitive relationships as normative and desirable (Schniedewind & Shevin, 1998). This paper will specify the differences between these small group learning approaches, “cooperative” and “collaborative”, from a democratic point of view. It will underline what features of “collaborative learning” at the School as Learning Community contribute to democratic education.
TUESDAY
(3) Qualitative Analysis of Talk Data
Martijn Willemse (Netherlands, Chair)
Rochelle Hurenkamp (Netherlands)
Lara Engelsman (Netherlands)
Sui Lin Goei (Netherlands)
Stéphane Clivaz (Switzerland)
Valérie Batteau (Switzerland)
Pete Dudley (UK)
In this session, the presenters will focus on studying teacher talk during teachers’ participation in the Lesson Study (LS). For this purpose, we studied these interactions between teachers. What challenges might be experienced while coding the conversations? What outcome measures are most appropriate? What are the benefits of using this method? These and more topics will be addressed in this session.
Presentation 1
Linking the micro level coding and the meso level analysis: challenges of analysing teachers’ dialogue in a lesson study
Stéphane Clivaz, Valérie Batteau, HEP, Switzerland
We will briefly present the codes used to code teachers’ utterances regarding the dialogic analysis (Clivaz, Daina, et al., 2023; Hennessy et al., 2016) on the one hand and the types of mathematical knowledge for teaching problem-solving (Chapman, 2015; Clivaz, Batteau, et al., 2023) on the other hand. We illustrate the challenges of linking this micro-level coding by determining the type of talk (Dudley, 2013; Littleton et Mercer, 2013) and analyzing the meso-level of a series of exchanges related to a topic. We will discuss these examples with the floor. In conclusion, we outline several outcomes regarding the types of dialogue associated with the construction of teachers’ knowledge.
Presentation 2
Analyzing teacher talk in lesson studies to learn what knowledge is drawn upon when collectively creating new knowledge through ‘learning point’ interaction
sequences and episodes.
Peter Dudley, University of Cambridge, UK; Ngee Derk Tiong, Sunway University, Malaysia
This talk draws upon Dudley’s 2013 study and a subsequent study by Tiong, N. D. (2022), which explores teacher talks in lesson studies and related teacher-learning communities. Dudley discovered that in high-trust lesson study group communities teachers co-create knowledge drawing upon their existing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and professional knowledge of the students-as-learners which exist in both conscious and tacit form requiring different modes of ‘recall’ and ‘re-call’ respectively by joint imagining and role play/rehearsal. Dudley inconclusively explored an apparent phenomenon within the discussion concerning patterns of 61 interaction sequences that seemed to generate shifts in perspective or beliefs that contributed to the adoption of new PCK and practice knowledge. Tiong observed 112 very similar discrete interaction-episode related learning instances in his study of Malaysian teacher learning communities and identified features of these sequences with greater clarity, signaling their importance in teacher learning.
Presentation 3
Challenges with coding teacher talk from a Lesson Study- behaviour study
Rochelle Hurkamp, Lara Engelsman, Martijn Willemse & Sui Lin Goei, Windesheim University, The Netherlands
In a project in which seven schools for primary education participated, the main goal was to support teachers through Lesson Study (LS) to deal with problem behavior in their classrooms. One of the instruments used during this study was video recording of the meetings and analyzing the teacher talk during the pre- and post-research lesson meetings. Our frame of analysis was based on the work of
Slavit et al. (2013), Dudley (2013) and Cochran et al. (1993) to code the quality of the interaction between teachers and to code the use and development of knowledge during the process. In this presentation, we will discuss the process of coding, provide examples of coding, and discuss the questions raised during the process of analysis, such as the role of the facilitator.
References
Chapman, O. (2015). Mathematics teachers’ knowledge for teaching problem solving. LUMAT, 3(1), 19–36. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/327b/973f1bccfc73f888aad4532f4c3b98f16a24.pdf
Clivaz, S., Batteau, V., Pellet, J.-P., Bünzli, L.-O., Daina, A. et Presutti, S. (2023). Teachers’ mathematical problem-solving knowledge: in what way is it constructed during teachers’ collaborative work? Journal of Mathematical Behavior, 69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmathb.2023.101051
Clivaz, S., Daina, A., Batteau, V., Presutti, S. et Bünzli, L.-O. (2023). How do dialogic interactions contribute to the construction of teachers’ mathematical problem-solving knowledge? Construction of a conceptual framework. International Journal for Lesson & Learning Studies, 12(1), 21-37. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLLS-03-2022-0031
Dudley, P. (2013). 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. Teaching and Teacher Education, 34(0), 107-121. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.04.006
Hennessy, S., Rojas-Drummond, S., Higham, R., Márquez, A. M., Maine, F., Ríos, R. M., García-Carrión, R., Torreblanca, O. et Barrera, M. J. (2016). Developing a coding scheme for analysing classroom dialogue across educational contexts. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 9, 16–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lcsi.2015.12.001
Littleton, K. et Mercer, N. (2013). Interthinking: Putting talk to work. Taylor & Francis. https://books.google.com.my/books?id=C26pAgAAQBAJ
Cochran, K. F., DeRuiter, J. A., & King, R. A. (1993). Pedagogical content knowing: an integrative model for teacher preparation. Journal of Teacher Education, 44, 263-272.
Slavit, D., Holmlund Nelson, T., & Deuel, A. (2013). Teacher groups’conceptions and uses of student-learning data. Journal of Teacher Education, 64, 8-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487112445517
Tiong, N. D. (2022) Doing dialogue differently: case studies of teacher collaborative discourse in Malaysian secondary schools. University of Cambridge repository.
(4) Current WALS PhD Research
Carola Manolini (Italy)
Rachel Goh (Singapore)
Linda Cardoso (Portugal)
Sui Lin Goei (Chair)
Tom Coenen (Netherlands, Discussant)
Presentation 1
Curriculum deliberation and school-level orientation in transforming knowledge through lesson study
Rachel Goh, English language institute of Singapore
This presentation addresses questions initiated by a study of curriculum deliberation in lesson study teams in two Singapore schools:
- How does lesson study enable curriculum deliberation?
- What teacher knowledge is drawn on and co-constructed through curriculum deliberation in lesson study?
- How does school-level orientation influence teacher learning in lesson study?
This study adopted a qualitative case study approach by employing participant observations of lesson study cycles and post-lesson teacher interviews. Analytical coding and thematic analysis were conducted on the transcripts of the lesson study meetings and the teacher interviews. The two cases revealed how lesson study enabled curriculum deliberation through processes that supported problem identification, planning to unlock the educational potential of content, and reflection on enactment to improve classroom practice. When teachers engaged in curriculum deliberation, they largely drew on Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). A new understanding of PCK and students’ knowledge was co-constructed through collective reasoning and actions that were informed by insights gained from lesson observations. School-level orientation was found to influence the extent to which teachers could examine existing practices and co-construct their knowledge. For example, one school’s emphasis on examination excellence resulted in deliberation confined to the narrow framing of the assessment task. Another school’s philosophy of putting students at the center of learning enabled teachers to deliberate on the issues with the current fill-in-the-blanks tasks and the educational value of differentiated learning resources. This study reveals a nuanced understanding of curriculum thinking in lesson study teams.
Presentation 2
The development of pedagogical content knowledge of prospective primary teachers in a lesson study
Linda Cardoso, Instituto de Educação da Universidade de Lisboa
This research arises from a search to overcome some of the challenges faced by initial teacher education, seeking to improve mathematics teacher education, and consequently, mathematics teaching and learning. This study investigates how the development of prospective teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge occurs during lesson study (LS), providing knowledge about how different LS activities help develop different aspects of pedagogical content knowledge. Thus, this study aims to understand how LS can promote the development of pedagogical content knowledge (knowledge about mathematics teaching and learning) among prospective primary school teachers. More specifically, what aspects of prospective teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge develop during LS? How does prospective teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge develop during LS? Following a qualitative approach, the study took place in a teacher education institution where an LS was conducted during the last semester of the teacher education program with the participation of two prospective teachers, a teacher educator, a cooperating teacher, and myself as a researcher. The results suggest that prospective teachers may develop pedagogical content knowledge when they participate in LS regarding lesson planning (goals and lesson plans), task design, students’ difficulties and solving strategies, whole-class discussions, and observation of student learning. This development occurs through engagement in LS activities that allow prospective teachers to deepen their knowledge. Although the prospective teachers had already planned, taught, and reflected on other lessons in previous courses, the way they involved themselves in detailed lesson planning in the LS and their subsequent detailed reflection allowed them to develop aspects of pedagogical content knowledge that they had not yet developed.
Presentation 3
Lotman’s Semiosphere in Mathematics Teacher
Education: Analyzing Lesson Study Discourses Carola Manolino, University of Torino, Italy
The interrelation between culture and mathematics education, including teacher education, is now a recognized and extensively analyzed phenomenon from various perspectives (e.g., Schoenfeld, 1989; Trouche et al., 2023). However, Lotman (1990),
a Russian semiotician, cautioned that a structuralist analysis alone is insufficient to comprehend the “complex system” of culture.
From this perspective, the concept of the “Semiosphere” emerges, representing a genuine epistemological paradigm shift. Lotman reevaluates the concept of a “text” as a structure, shifting towards an interpretation of the text as a complex system, a model, and a “meaning generator“. My doctoral thesis was situated within this framework. My unit of analysis is the dialogue among participants in the lesson-study model. I view Lesson Study as an opportunity for teachers’ professional development within the context of Cultural Transposition: encountering a “foreign” teaching practice to reflect upon our own practices rather than engaging in comparative analysis.
Starting from Sfard’s definition of learning as discourse development and applying it to teachers’ discourses in the context of Lesson Study, I examined the texts and traced their changes. This led me to demonstrate the absolute necessity of Lotman’s theoretical
framework, which is well suited to capture the “multilayered informational deposit” that culture as a whole preserves and transmits. On the other hand, it allowed me to identify certain elements of professional development (which I referred to as “detonators”, drawing from part of Lotman’s theory) capable of initiating the processes of “meaning generation” that render discourses meaningful. For example, in this presentation, I discuss the case of a Lesson Plan.
(5) The teacher leader as Lesson Study Champion
Sui Lin Goei (Netherlands, Chair)
Sarah Seleznyov (UK)
Stef Edwards (UK)
John Paul Mynott (UK)
Geoff Wake (UK, discussant)
Presentation 1
Sarah Seleznyov, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Much of the literature (e.g., Chambers et al., 2013; Albers and Pattuwage, 2017; Aarons, Hurlburt, and Horwitz, 2011) sees successful long-term use of a new practice after full implementation as the ultimate indicator of its success. Authors’ estimations of the timeframe for sustainability range from one year (Shelton et al., 2018) to four years (Albers and Pattuwage, 2017). This study explores how UK implementers of LS have worked to secure its sustainability when implemented as an approach to in-service teacher education in schools.
A series of detailed case studies involving documentary analysis of LS paperwork and policies since implementation began, observations of LS practices, and interviews with LS leaders and teachers engaged in LS were conducted in three schools in the UK. All three schools had been using LS for between three and five years but had been more or less successful at achieving sustainability. All case studies explored the extent to which sustainability had been deliberately planned and the strategies that have been employed to try and secure sustainability. Views on whether the implementation of LS was sustainable by teachers and leaders were also sought.
Findings reveal the importance in the UK of the LS Champion, a member of the school staff in a leadership role, who used a combination of ‘fidelity-consistent’ adaptations (McLeod et al., 2023:29) to the local context, careful redistribution of resources and thoughtful succession planning to ensure the sustainability of LS in their schools. The research also revealed the behaviors common to champions across schools, which included being passionate about LS and actively sharing their enthusiasm with others, taking part in the LS process themselves to model their commitment, being persistent with the implementation of LS even when there were challenges, and creative problem-solving as implementation issues arose.
The paper explores possible further avenues for research into the international implementation of LS, and offers guidance for practitioners seeking to implement LS in their own contexts.
References
Aarons, G.A., Hurlburt, M. and Horwitz, S.M., 2011. Advancing a conceptual model of evidence-based practice implementation in public service sectors. Administration and policy in mental health and mental health services research, 38, pp.4-23.
Albers, B. and Pattuwage, L., 2017. Implementation in education: Findings from a scoping review. Melbourne: Evidence for Learning, 10.
Chambers, D.A., Glasgow, R.E. and Stange, K.C., 2013. The dynamic sustainability framework: addressing the paradox of sustainment amid ongoing change. Implementation science, 8(1), pp.1-11.
Shelton, R.C., Cooper, B.R. and Stirman, S.W., 2018. The sustainability of evidence-based interventions and practices in public health and health care. Annual review of public health, 39, pp.55-76.
Presentation 2
Stef Edwards, Learn Academies Trust (University of Brighton)
This paper presents the findings of a professional doctoral study on Lesson Study leadership. The qualitative study was grounded in the researcher’s professional practices. It grew from an authentic professional challenge relating to implementing, sustaining, and leading Lesson Study, initially in one small primary school, and eventually across a group of eleven primary schools in England. A crystallization methodology was used to investigate the leadership goals and practices enacted by system, school, and teacher leaders in their efforts to establish the conditions, cultures, processes, and structures that would enable effective Lesson Study to thrive within and between the schools. Findings were crystallized from data collected between 2015 and 2021 through participant observation, semi-structured ‘Pictor’ interviews and narrative inquiry. Conclusions relate to theory and practice, and are likely to be of interest to Lesson Study leaders, researchers, and practitioners. The paper begins by analyzing leaders’ rationales and purposes for introducing and sustaining Lesson Study in their schools, and then presents the background of the study, its theoretical framework, and research design. Key findings are summarized, relating to the essential theoretical knowledge and conceptual understanding leaders of Lesson Study need to implement and sustain it successfully in school settings, and authentic examples of Lesson Study leadership practices at the system, school, and teacher levels are provided. These practices include strategies, systems, actions, and dispositions planned and enacted by leaders in their work to achieve their Lesson Study goals. The paper concludes with the researcher’s reflections on some underlying principles that may contribute to the successful leadership of effective Lesson Study in school settings.
References
Biesta, G. (2020) Educational Research: An Unorthodox Introduction. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Chicago Lesson Study Alliance (downloaded 2023) CLR: A Powerful Form of Lesson Study https://www.lsalliance.org/clr-a-powerful-form-of-lesson-study/
Department for Education (2016) Standard for Teachers’ Professional Development. UK: Department for Education.
Edwards, S.G. (2022) Promoting and sustaining Lesson Study as a form of effective professional learning: an investigation of the practices enacted by teacher, school and system leaders. EdD Thesis. University of Brighton.
Ellingson L. L. (2014) ‘’The truth must dazzle gradually’’: Enriching relationship research using a crystallization framework. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 31(4) pp. 442–450.
King, N., Bravington, A., Brooks, J., Hardy, B., Melvin, J. and Wilde, D., (2013) The Pictor Technique: A Method for Exploring the Experience of Collaborative Working, Qualitative Health Research, 23(8), pp. 1138-1152.
Mason, M. (2008) What Is Complexity Theory and What Are Its Implications for Educational Change? Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(1) pp. 35-49.
Priestley, M., Biesta, G. and Robinson, S. (2015) Teacher Agency: What is it and why does it matter? In Kneyber, R.; Evers, J. (eds), Flip the System: Changing Education from the Bottom Up. London: Routledge.
Timperley, H. (2011) Realizing the Power of Professional Learning. Kindle edition. UK: Open University Press.
Twiselton, S. (2002) Beyond the curriculum: learning to teach primary literacy. Doctoral thesis. University of Birmingham.
Yoshida, M. (2012) Mathematics lesson study in the United States: Current status and ideas for conducting high quality and effective lesson study. International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, 1(2) pp. 140-152.
Presentation 3
Facilitators as leaders of Lesson Study
John Paul Mynott, University of Aberdeen
Introducing Lesson Study (LS) into schools and teachers may seem relatively straightforward, but building and developing LS in a sustainable way means it is important to think about wider considerations. One of these factors is facilitation. Facilitation is a feature of UK LS; however, it is not always called facilitation. LS organizers, LS leaders, knowledgeable others, and LS champions are all terms that might be used to describe the facilitator. In this paper, I will explore the developing role of the facilitator in the UK LS, specifically the skills and roles that facilitators can play, and how this role can play a part in developing sustainable models of LS.
This study draws on several publications on facilitators in the UK context since 2010 (Dudley, 2013; Dudley, 2015; Holden et al., 2023; Mynott, 2018; 2019; 2022; Mynott & Michel, 2022; Mynott & O’Reilly, 2022; 2023; Mynott & Zimmatore, 2021) as well as examples from current practice. Using a thematic approach, key themes are shared and linked to the roles of facilitators. This will be compared with the wider literature on LS facilitation.
The findings indicated that facilitators have different roles and utilize a range of skills. The focus of these roles is to ensure stability and learning within an LS cycle by fueling and enabling participants. This fueling and enabling can be achieved through the provision of time, expertise, and/or organization. The skills that facilitators use to develop participant talk, help them revisit their learning, and maintain their focus on the question being explored within an LS cycle.
References
Holden, M, O’Reilly, S, & Mynott, J. (2023). ‘Facilitation of trialogic spaces: reflections from Irish and Scottish online lesson studies’, Research in Teacher Education, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 9-23
Mynott, J. (2019). ‘Lesson study outcomes: a theoretical model’ International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 117-134
Mynott, J. (2018). ‘Facilitating the Lesson Study Facilitator: a reflection on expertise in Lesson Study’, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329020242_Facilitating_the_Lesson_Study_Facilitator_a_reflection_on_expertise_in_Lesson_Study
Mynott, J. (2021). ‘Sustainable Professional Learning: a development of lesson study’, IMPACT: Journal of the Chartered College of Teaching, vol. 13.
Mynott, J. & Michel, D. (2022). ‘The invisible leader: facilitation in lesson study’, Educational Process International Journal, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 48-61
Mynott, J. & O’Reilly, S. (2022). ‘Establishing a lesson study collaboration matrix’, International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 174-192
Mynott, J. & Zimmatore, M. (2022). ‘Pracademic Productive Friction: boundary crossing and pressure points’, Journal of Professional Capital and Community, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 45-56
WEDNESDAY
6) Highlights in Dutch/Flanders Research
Gonny Schellings (Netherlands, Chair)
Andre Swart (Netherlands)
Paul Alstein (Netherlands)
Iris Willems (Belgium)
Déde de Haan (Netherlands)
In this session four contributions are selected to provide an insight about Dutch/Flemish LS practices and research.
Presentation 1
Lesson Study @LOBO Suriname
André Swart, Windesheim; ROC van Twente, the Netherlands
Lesson Study @LOBO was a six week project in Surinam and consisted of two main parts. First, there was a Lesson Study program for students to learn from their assumptions, compared to the data collected. Second, there was a teacher training program intended to assist teachers in becoming LS coaches. All talks were recorded during meetings. This presentation focuses on in-depth discussions between teachers and their progress toward professionalism.
Presentation 2
Using Lesson Study as a research approach in design-based research on special relativity education at the secondary level
Paul Alstein, Freudenthal Institute, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
In this presentation, I will present an example of the use of lesson studies as a research approach in design research. Our Lesson Study focused on the implementation and evaluation of an online simulation environment in which secondary school students can explore Einstein’s famous theory of special relativity.
Presentation 3
The learning process of student teachers with Lesson Study
Iris Willems, Antwerp School of Education, Belgium
An important goal of teacher education is to train student teachers to become educational professionals who want to question and improve their educational practices in a well-founded way. Lesson Study offers opportunities to pursue this goal. With this research we want to gain insight into how LS contributes to the learning process of student teachers and what the conditions are to support this from teacher education
Presentation 4
Implementing Learning Study to foster Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching: a case in pre-service teacher education in the Netherlands
Dédé de Haan, Utrecht University, Freudenthal Institute; NHLStenden Hogeschool, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
This study explored the impact of a learning study course on pre-service teachers’ Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching. The findings indicated that analyzing pre-tests and observing research lessons were most important in PSTs’ awareness of students’ understanding and teaching strategies. Discussion and collaboration are helpful for increasing content knowledge. However, the impact was modest.
7) Lesson Study Research in Kazakhstan
Tavilya Akimova (Chair)
Elvira Rakhmail
Peter Dudley
Yulia Melnikova
Rinat Ramazanov
The symposium aims to discuss the stages of the emergence and evolution of Lesson Study in Kazakhstan. We will answer the question of why we decided to use lesson study in Kazakhstan, which is the prerequisite for its inclusion in the culture of schools. We will discuss the Center of Excellence, which has been overseeing this process for 15 years, about the efforts made by the Center of Excellence to spread and develop ideas among the teaching community in Kazakhstan. The Center of Excellence became a ‘voice’ of this approach, and a few years later became the ambassador of the Lesson study in the Republic of Kazakhstan. This process has been continuously supervised by experts from Japan and England, and has had a dramatic impact on lesson-study dissemination.
We will show the transformation of educational PD content starting with the implementation of 1-2 sessions about LS into bigger courses and finishing with the two-week professional development program specially designed to train trainers who will become the leaders of LS in their schools. We will share how Kazakhstan became a significant part of the world’s LS community in a short period. The final part of the symposium will be devoted to different research that have been done on Lesson Study in Kazakhstan. The findings represent a real picture of LS implementation that differs from the intended idea in various aspects. Four modified scenarios emerged while analyzing data, where several obligatory and complementary conditions for providing LS sustainability were identified.