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Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
1
Lesson Study in the San Mateo-Foster City School District
Rebecca Perry, Catherine Lewis & Motoko Akiba
1
Mills College, Oakland CA
Abstract
Lesson study is a widespread form of professional development in Japan
that has recently emerged in a number of U.S. sites. This paper describes a
collaboration between researchers and practitioners at one U.S. lesson study site.
The collaboration had simultaneous goals of building lesson study in one school
district; documenting the implementation process, supports and challenges; and
using this information to contribute constructively to the local and national
lesson study reform effort. Data on the program (observations, interviews and
written reflections) show that the lesson study goals, activities, and resources
changed over time as teachers tried lesson study, and as knowledge about lesson
study grew in the district and nationwide. Data also suggest that teachers' lesson
study activities helped them to develop the kinds of instructional and subject
matter knowledge that are goals of teacher professional development. Four
implications for educational research are drawn, including the need for research
methods that contribute in a timely fashion to innovations in progress; the need
for cross-case theory building on lesson study; the danger of assessing the
effectiveness of lesson study without recognition of the variety of local
adaptations; and the low value held in many educational research circles for the
types of lesson study research requested by practitioners and needed to support
successful adaptation (e.g., research on experiential learning methods, practical
1
Acknowledgement: This material is based upon research supported by the National Science Foundation under
grants REC 9814967 and RED-9355857. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in
this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
2
guidelines and know-how related to lesson study, translation of more diverse
models from Japan, etc.).
Our findings point up the potential value of lesson study for practitioners
willing to take the risks associated with an emerging innovation, and the
importance of opportunities for practitioners to find ways to enhance their lesson
study knowledge and practice over time.
I. Introduction
Lesson study, the major form of professional development in Japan, is a teacher-led
instructional improvement cycle in which teachers work together to:
Formulate goals for student learning and long-term development;
Collaboratively plan a “research lesson” designed to bring to life these goals;
Conduct the lesson, with one team member teaching and others gathering evidence
on student learning and development;
Discuss the evidence gathered during the lesson, using it to improve the lesson, the
unit, and instruction more generally;
If desired, teach, observe, and improve the lesson again in one or more
additional classrooms. (Fernandez et al., 2001; Lewis, in press; Lewis &
Tsuchida, 1998; Yoshida, 1999).
Lesson study embodies many qualities of effective professional development
identified by U.S. research,
2
and has enabled Japanese classroom teachers to
build an emphasis on problem-solving and “teaching for understanding” in
2
For example, it is based on a cycle of inquiry and improvement (setting goals, planning, doing,
reflecting) and is collaboration that is both authentic and student-centered (see, for example,
Loucks-Horsley et al., 1998, Little1981, Murphy & Lick, 2001). See also Lewis (2002); Stepanek,
(2001); and Wang-Iverson et al., (2000) for discussion of the potential of lesson study in the US.
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
3
Japanese elementary education over the past four decades (Lewis & Tsuchida,
1998; Takahashi, 2000).
The publication of results from the Third International Mathematics and
Science Study and The Teaching Gap’s call for "something like lesson study to be
tried in the United States" (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999) has generated considerable
lesson study activity among U.S. educators, including state and local
conferences, special journal issues, websites, videotapes, and lesson study groups
in many regions of the U.S.
3
With all of this recent U.S. lesson study activity, some observers of
educational reform are beginning to speculate about the future of lesson study in
this country. If our sobering history of education reform is any indication, lesson
study will fail to make a significant impact; in the past, few reforms that have
succeeded at an initial site have “scaled-up” successfully. The educational
research community has played a significant role in documenting the difficulty
of reform and building awareness of what to do (and not to do) in implementing
innovations. However, relatively few published studies have been designed to
contribute constructively to an ongoing reform effort. This paper describes a
collaboration between researchers and practitioners to document lesson study as
it emerges in one U.S. site, and to provide timely information designed to help
the innovation take hold.
3
For example, conferences were held by the International Congress of Teachers of Mathematics,
California State Subject Matter Projects, New Jersey Council of Teachers of Mathematics, New
York Japanese School at Greenwich. Published references include Coeyman (2000), Council for
Basic Education (2000), Germain-McCarthy (2001), and Stepanek (Spring, 2001).
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
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II. Year One: Lesson Study Emerges in the San Mateo-Foster City School
District (Spring 2000-Spring 2001)
Four educators in the San Mateo-Foster City (SMFC) school district
4
heard
about lesson study in the Spring of 2000, at a workshop focused on the TIMSS
videostudy (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). The four educators – three teachers who
also served part-time as math coaches and one project coordinator – saw lesson
study as a means to create lasting change in their district and build on on-going
efforts to promote teacher collaboration. In later reflecting on their reasons for
wanting to adopt lesson study, the four educators mentioned the goals listed in
the left column of Table 2. The educators hoped to improve the district’s
professional development model, which they regarded as ineffective and
constantly changing; to build teacher-driven, collaborative learning and
instructional improvement; and thereby to improve student mathematics
learning. As one of the teacher-coaches said, they considered lesson study as a
model for their district because:
This seemed like something that could really become institutionalized
almost organically.... You just have to start it and teachers would love it and
so they would just keep it going. Once you could get them in the habit of
collaborating, they would continue to collaborate.... I guess that might have
been a naïve idea, but just kind of idealistically thinking if you can just give
teachers that positive experience of collaborating together they will keep
wanting to do that when they see how powerful it is.
Japanese teachers typically adopt lesson study as a way to promote student
development, and they begin lesson study by discussing the ideal qualities they
would like students to have in the future, and students’ actual qualities now
5
. In
contrast, San Mateo educators adopted lesson study with an initial focus on
4
A small K-8 school district south of San Francisco.
5
However, Japanese educators recognize that lesson study is a way to build collaboration and
develop a community of practice, e.g., Nakamura et al (2001).
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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5
improving learning among teachers, and the hope that improved student
outcomes would come over time with the use of lesson study.
Lesson Study Implementation, Year One
A key factor in implementing lesson study during year one was the team of
four educators just described (henceforth called “the leaders”), who actively
studied, organized, and advocated for lesson study in the district, drawing on
each others' strengths, which included mathematics expertise at different grade
levels.
Their actions to implement lesson study during the 2000-2001 school year are
shown in Figure 1 as seven implementation steps. The leaders did not
characterize their actions as an implementation cycle; they simply took steps that
made sense at the time. However, Figure 1 may provide a useful representation
of their actions by drawing attention to (1) the non-sequential and repeating
nature of the implementation activities and (2) the specific steps taken to
implement lesson study during year one. In the SMFC district, these seven
implementation activities overlapped in time, as shown in Table 1. District
leaders assumed that these steps would need to be repeated many times before
the district would reach their lesson study goals; for instance, they did not expect
to change the district's norms of teacher collaboration in one year.
Step 1: Learning about lesson study. The leaders actively sought
opportunities to learn about lesson study through print and video materials, live
observation, conferences, and consultation with lesson study researchers and
practitioners, as summarized in Table 3. These resources provided both an
overall picture of lesson study and examples of and detailed information on
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
6
specific lesson study features, such as sample lesson plans and guidelines for
developing a research lesson and using a lesson plan during a classroom
observation. Their learning was supported by many factors, including the
willingness of the superintendent’s office to support this practitioner-initiated
learning agenda, travel funds, and the fact that one team member was fluent in
Japanese.
Step 2: Shaping the lesson study model. The leaders believed they would
need to adapt the Japanese lesson study model to their local circumstances and
needs. As one leader said:
We did actually have the idea that we were going to have to translate this
Japanese model into something American. ....We knew that exactly how it
was done in Japan wasn't going to work here precisely. I think that we were
realizing at the time that teachers would need to understand this and they
would need to implement it and they would need to enjoy it if it was going
to persist in any way.
The leaders solicited volunteers interested in doing lesson study in
mathematics or science.
6
Although lesson study occurs in all subject areas in
Japan, the leaders focused on math and science in order to take advantage of
Eisenhower professional development funds. Their lesson study design
included teachers meeting in small teams of 3 to 5 individuals for 20 hours across
the year, outside of school hours, to plan as many as three research lessons. In
addition to the focus solely on math and science, a second departure from
Japanese practice was to provide a $500 stipend in return for 20 hours of work.
As one leader said:
6
Because of funding requirements, only middle school teachers were supported to focus their
lesson study work on science. All groups that implemented lesson study in year one focused on
mathematics.
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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If it was somehow open-ended, it might be on the one hand unclear and
frustrating.... On the other hand, ....if everyone was getting the same stipend
there would be a lack of equity about 'they might give that many hours and
we gave so many more hours’.... There is no compensation as far as I know
in Japan; that is part of the expectation of the job. But we can't, simply
because of the contractual nature of our working conditions, ....decide to add
hours and commitments to people's time and expect to get a lot of response.
While some resources listed eight collaborative teacher activities that
comprise lesson study,
7
district leaders collapsed lesson study into four primary
activities: collaboratively planning a lesson; teaching and observing a lesson
(calling on substitutes to cover classrooms); discussing, revising, and (if time)
reteaching the lesson; and providing the lesson to district leaders to be published
on the district intranet.
The leaders knew that lesson study in Japan began by agreeing on a common
goal for students. On the advice of a Japanese colleague teaching in the U.S.,
they purposefully "short-circuited" the goal-setting process by providing a goal
rather than having participants spend time defining a common goal.
8
By
providing this goal – “that all students will be successful in mathematics” – they
wanted to give teachers more time to "get into the lesson study process." One
leader said:
We knew we were skipping that [goal-setting]. Because that seemed really
big to us and we didn't know how to get people from different schools in
different grade levels to be able to do that.
7
The Teaching Gap (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999) identifies eight steps involved in lesson study:
Defining the problem, planning the lesson, teaching the lesson, evaluating the lesson and
reflecting on its effect, revising the lesson, teaching the revised lesson, evaluating and reflecting,
again, and sharing the results. Other authors collapse divide these activities in different ways.
For example, Lewis (in press) collapses these tasks into four steps.
8
The Japanese colleague indicated that goals would be meaningful to teachers only if they had
time to discuss and come to common agreement about what the goals meant.
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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The SMFC lesson study model specified the use of substitutes to cover
teachers' classes during research lessons, another difference between their model
and lesson study in Japan. One leader explained that, because of legal
requirements: "Substitutes are absolutely needed here. We cannot send teachers
out and leave classrooms unsupervised."
The leaders also made modifications designed to create a safe environment
for participating teachers. As one leader explained: "We allowed for just about
any degree of participation. You didn't really have to teach the lesson if you
didn't want to." District leaders offered to teach the lessons or have teachers do
the lesson without observation by colleagues. Based on their philosophy that
teachers would like it if they tried it, the lesson study model focused on getting
as many teachers as were interested involved in the process, and creating a safe
environment for building and discovering the value of teacher collaboration.
Step 3: Leveraging support for the lesson study effort. The leaders
discussed lesson study with district administrators in charge of various funding
streams, in order to find support for training opportunities, substitutes, and
stipends for teachers. As leaders later recalled, the top district administration
was not actively supportive, but did not "get in the way" of the lesson study
effort. District leaders also arranged continuing education credits through a local
university as a further incentive for teachers' participation.
The leaders also recruited outside researchers (Lewis and Perry, of Mills
College) to document the district’s lesson study effort, provide formative
feedback on progress and challenges, and provide evidence to teachers that their
work was of broader significance. As one of the district leaders said later, "The
validation…was incredibly valuable for us and for the teachers – of this effort
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
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being worth it." As these examples illustrate, the leaders focused on building
acceptance of lesson study during year one.
Step 4: Recruiting and training lesson study participants. In Spring 2000,
district leaders pitched lesson study to district principals and asked them to
dedicate one professional development day at the beginning of the 2000-2001
school year to introducing lesson study to teachers in the district. Although
principals declined the request, district administrators provided financial
support for three different lesson study training opportunities which allowed
leaders to "entice people with a lot of different ways they might get introduced to
it." During these sessions, the leaders introduced interested teachers to research
on lesson study, showed the TIMSS videotape of a Japanese mathematics lesson,
and discussed implications of lesson study for district professional development.
They also introduced their model of lesson study and the support teachers could
expect, including stipends for after-school participation, substitutes for research
lessons and assistance from the teacher-coaches if they had questions.
During these events, teachers who wanted to participate in lesson study
were asked to form small lesson study groups by grade level (or adjacent grade
levels) and to begin selection of a research lesson topic from the district
mathematics curriculum that was consistent with the district's overall goal of
success for all students in mathematics. Participants were advised to focus on a
topic that was difficult to teach or learn, and to link their work to the district
mathematics standards. For many groups, it was difficult to select a good
research lesson topic. As one leader pointed out, Japanese teachers could start
lesson study by consulting books of research lessons, but in the U.S., "We don't
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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10
have that base of lessons already described and written up to use as a starting
point.… We don't have that shared body of great lessons to begin from."
Lesson planning guidelines provided during the training encouraged
teachers to consider students' prior knowledge, likely student responses to the
lesson, ways to assess the lesson’s success, and how the lesson fit in a unit or
sequence of lessons. Leaders later reported that these initial guidelines were
"pretty minimal," since they themselves were still learning about lesson study.
Step 5: Doing lesson study. In the first year of implementation, twenty-
eight teachers formed seven lesson study teams (six school-based elementary
teams and one cross-school middle school team). Groups had freedom to decide
how to use their funded time, and each teacher received three half-day
substitutes.
In the training, district leaders had emphasized that lesson study was "about
the lesson, not about the teacher." Within this broad guideline, each team
established specific processes for when and how to work together. For example,
one team agreed to adopt a learning (rather than teaching) attitude in their
planning meetings. Another team agreed that self-critical reflection would
promote more learning than would a defensive attitude and that each teacher
should have ownership, voice and responsibility for the research lesson’s
outcome. While some participants were initially wary of working together and
of being observed by colleagues, at least one teacher in each group volunteered
to teach the research lesson and be observed by colleagues. Teachers reported
that the focus on the lesson rather than on the teacher promoted safe
collaboration.
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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Given the loose guidelines, it is not surprising that the seven groups varied
in their lesson study implementation. All but one of the seven groups
collaboratively planned at least one research lesson; the remaining group
collaboratively selected their lesson topic and activity, but the lesson was
planned by the teacher who taught it. Some groups planned one lesson; other
groups planned two lessons. Some groups taught, revised, and re-taught a
single lesson in different classrooms with different instructors, while other
groups moved on to plan a second lesson. All groups debriefed their lessons and
in most cases this occurred immediately after the lesson, although one group had
to schedule their debriefing at a later time, resulting in some fading of their
memories. Some groups invited the leaders to attend their meetings and lessons,
while other groups worked on their own, with little outsider input. In addition,
some groups were comprised of individuals with more mathematics content
knowledge than others, which seemed to enable these groups to focus more
deeply on mathematics content. Most lesson study work was finished by April
to accommodate other end-of-year priorities such as standardized testing.
Step 6: Reflecting on lesson study. Reflection on the lesson study process
was supported by much informal information gathered by the leaders through
their own group membership or coaching in district schools. Additional formal
sources of information included interviews with each of the lesson study groups,
observations of group meetings, and lesson plans submitted by each group.
In moving ahead with lesson study without clear guidelines about how to do
it, the leaders had taken a calculated risk. They recognized that many teachers
were unaccustomed to feedback on their instruction and might have negative
experiences with collaboration that would undermine the entire lesson study
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
12
effort. The data available at the end of year one suggested to the leaders that the
lack of clarity inherent in their “learn as we go” approach and the pitfalls of
collaboration had been outweighed by lesson study’s advantages over other
forms of professional development, as two participants' comments reflect:
Most other professional development I've been through has been sitting at a
meeting and taking in new information for a day. And then they're like,
"OK, go do it!" The practicality of that is really hard. There's no follow-up
and you don't talk about how it goes after you do it or anything like that.
You go for a day and you get all excited and you're like "Oh, that's such a
good idea!" and then you're like "What did he say again? What should I be
doing right now?"
I liked this because rather than putting a portfolio together and saying this is
what I did all year and then putting it in the closet, we actually used this.
And it really affected our students. To me, that was beneficial.
When teachers were asked to report on what they found useful about lesson
study, every participant mentioned collaboration. Comments from both
experienced and inexperienced teachers illustrate the perceived benefits of
multiple views on the lessons:
When you've been doing certain lessons for many years, you don't have a
fresh outlook on it. So if you bring in someone who hasn't done the lesson
yet and you discuss it, you've got someone asking the right questions like
'Now why is it you do this?' And 'Is this part necessary?' And 'Are the kids
ready at this point of the year?' That's what I think is really valuable.
[The lesson] wouldn't have been nearly as powerful if I had done that by
myself. I would have just followed what it said in the book. And that's what
didn't work for me last year, but I didn't know where to change it.
The collaborative structure of lesson study pushed teachers to come to joint
understandings, for example about student capacity, effective teaching strategies,
and mathematics. One teacher leader reported:
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
13
A lot of times it seemed like we were trying to establish common vocabulary,
common understanding. We would say, "OK, let's do fact families." Then
we would all go, "Well, what does that mean? What are fact families? What
numbers are you talking about? How do you do it?" We had to have a big
discussion about what is place value. So, if you're going to say, "Oh, this is
really important. They don't get place value." Well, what does that mean?
What don't they get? Just coming to those common understandings of what
are we talking about.
Teachers also appreciated the observation component of lesson study, both
in terms of observing the lesson and teaching in front of colleagues. Even
teachers who were initially wary about being observed valued the experience, as
one teacher indicated:
I haven't been watched since either being observed by the principal or since
my demo lesson to be hired.... [With lesson study] I'm not being criticized,
I'm being watched [and other teachers are] looking at the lesson and looking
at the kids. So it was a positive environment of being observed. I was
nervous definitely, but when it got down to it, I forgot that you guys were
there. I was just with the kids.
The joint observation of the classroom lesson, followed by reflection about the
lesson, also helped teachers to establish common understandings about how to
improve the lesson. As two teachers said:
You could all hypothetically have conversations at lunch ....about kids or
what would you do in [a] situation, but you don't experience anything
together. ....Because you both weren't there, you might have a slightly
different picture of it. And so, I think that's a huge problem.
I think the best part of it was the ability to sit and discuss after the lesson
with the four of us. Being able to debrief and talk about it and what went
right and what could be improved. That kind of thing, to me, was the most
valuable.
When asked if they would continue lesson study the following year, all
teachers were enthusiastic about its benefits, but several mentioned that
competing demands in the coming school year (for example, school-wide
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
14
adoption of a new language arts program) would make it difficult to continue
lesson study. Fifteen out of twenty four teachers interviewed at the end of the
first year planned to continue doing lesson study.
In addition to the challenge of finding time to do lesson study, topic selection
was a second major challenge for most groups. Teachers had difficulty
anticipating where they would be in the curriculum at the time that the research
lesson was going to occur. A teacher whose group decided to focus on word
problems commented:
We're doing measurement right now, but I'll stick this in and kind of work
on story problems, but.... I'm kind of constrained to go back to something
that we already did.
Interviewer: So it feels a little bit out of place?
It feels a little bit out of place. We knew that they [story problems] were
going to come a couple of times during the year, so we thought it would be
[a] good [topic]. But they've already come a couple of times during the
year…
Starting from the district curriculum also required teachers to hone their
selected topic down to a manageable size for a research lesson, a problem that
teachers in Japan rarely face because of their spare curriculum (Lewis &
Tsuchida, 1998). Lessons, typically taught over several days,
9
needed to fit into
one-hour timeslots. As one teacher said about their topic:
My suspicion is that we picked a really cool problem but that it was maybe
beyond what was a good problem for a first attempt. It might have been
easier for us, when we're trying out something for the first time, to choose
something that is very familiar that we already teach within our classroom
and perfect an activity we already had than maybe launch out and try
something else. ....When I go back and I look at it now, I think we really took
9
The district's elementary mathematics curriculum for a particular grade level includes a series of
curriculum units, where each unit is divided into activities and lessons. For example, the third
grade curriculum consists of multiple math topics, one of which is geometry; teachers' guides
suggest teaching the three geometry units using 10 activities in 43 sessions (one-hour math
classes).
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
15
on something that was huge. We could have taken on something that was
much simpler as a first task.
Although district leaders had emphasized lesson study as a cycle of inquiry,
they observed that teachers who had not previously been involved in
collaborative lesson planning seemed to focus most on the lesson planning rather
than the observation or debriefing aspects of lesson study. Having teachers
begin their work by selecting a particular math lesson to fit an already
established goal – rather than developing a common lesson study goal – a may
have exacerbated this focus on lesson planning. However, the data also
suggested that teachers' views of lesson study developed and changed
throughout the year as they tried it. Teachers reported the stipend they received
allowed them time to collaboratively explore, falter, and figure out where they
were going. One teacher commented on how her perception of the lesson study
process changed:
I originally thought, 'Well, this is silly. We're just going to go do a lesson and
then we're going to rewrite the same exact lesson after we teach it.' Which
didn't happen.
Leaders saw that their “learn as we go” approach and loose lesson study
guidelines had resulted in implementation that looked different across the seven
lesson study groups. As leaders learned from their own participation in lesson
study, they shared their learning with other groups:
As we were going...., we had some real issues about how to make the
debriefing process more effective. Only from our ....group going first and
realizing how we could do it better.... And then quickly running to other
groups and saying "Oh, let's share this information with you." ....When we
started off, we didn't even have any guidelines for people about what to do
or how to debrief and process afterwards.... What we began to suggest....is
that people have different jobs when they are observing, because .... the first
time we did it, everybody just observed, without any kind of like assigned
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
16
task. ....So we realized we had to have specific data that we were collecting
because when we are getting together to talk about it, we're not referring to
data. We're just referring to our subjective memories about what happened.
I didn't feel like the post-lesson discussion was deep enough and rich
enough about really reflecting on content and getting at the content. So that
we knew that we needed to be collecting data better. ....I remember I went to
the [school name] lesson when they were getting ready to do the lesson and
saying "OK, think about this. ....What is everybody going to be looking for
and watching for?" The [groups] that we didn't go to, they didn't necessarily
get that direction. ....It seemed like people appreciated having some kind of
direction.
This comment illustrates three important lessons learned by the leaders during
year one: the need to try lesson study in order to refine it, the need for guidelines
for participants just beginning to do lesson study, and the value of providing
content and lesson study support for lesson study groups.
Step 7: Sharing the knowledge with others. The leaders shared their lesson
study experiences with other educators at local and statewide conferences of
math and science educators in spring, 2001, providing an opportunity to further
their reflection on their lesson study effort and to compare it to lesson study in
other sites.
III. Lesson Study Modifications: Summer 2001-The Present
This section highlights some of the modifications made to lesson study after
the first year of implementation.
Changing Lesson Study Goals
As SMFC educators learned more about lesson study, their original hopes for
lesson study became more clearly defined and they began to see other potential
benefits. Table 2 illustrates their original lesson study goals (left) and the
additional goals they added in the second year (right), beginning in Summer of
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
17
2001. Although they continued to focus on the same four categories of goals –
professional development, teacher collaboration, instructional practice, and
student learning – in year two they developed more specific goals around
collaboration and the lesson study model.
For example, while district leaders originally hoped that lesson study would
change the culture of collaboration within schools, they later realized that this
goal assumed that teachers already understood the value of collaboration.
Teacher feedback at the end of the first year suggested that many teachers had
not experienced a positive model of collaboration like lesson study before and
did not understand prior to this experience how they could benefit from
collaborative work. As one district leader reported:
I thought it was obvious, the power of collaboration. And then I came
around to thinking that that's one of the goals – for teachers to discover and
value the collaboration.
District leaders also learned that, in addition to having teachers value
collaboration, it was important for teachers to understand and acknowledge how
difficult good collaboration could be. As a leader said:
I realize how much more complicated collaborating is than just having
people get together and share ideas. Now that I've really had to plan lessons
with people and had to work at when to be quiet and when to listen.... And
am I being a good listener and trying to figure out do we all have the same
ideas. Really realizing how multi-dimensional good collaboration really is.
On a personal level, [one of my goals is] realizing how can I be good at that
or how can I do that better. And how can I help other teachers understand
the role that they play in being a good collaborator.
In acknowledging that some teachers neither understood the value nor the
difficulty of good collaboration, district leaders began to acknowledge the need
to facilitate good collaboration as part of their lesson study model.
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District leaders also began to understand that lesson study was more than a
process for planning and revising a lesson; they began to see how the full cycle of
lesson study activities worked together to uncover issues around teaching and
student learning. As one leader reported: "I think at the beginning the emphasis
was much more on the lesson and....as people work, they realize that it really is
about the entire process." This learning happened partly in response to teachers'
comments about how valuable the debriefing aspect of lesson study had been for
them.
In addition, as their understanding of lesson study expanded beyond a
lesson focus, district leaders began to see that lesson study could be used as a
tool to assist with other aspects of teaching. This shift led district leaders to
consider two additional goals for teacher participants. First, they wanted to help
teachers understand that lesson study could support the implementation of other
curricula or programs. As one teacher leader put it "...it is something that can be
used to address a lot of the issues that we are forced to address all the time." In a
sense, they wanted to deepen teachers' understanding of lesson study, to help
them see that lesson study is not a "program" to add to their list of
responsibilities. This, they felt, would increase teachers' excitement and
enthusiasm about lesson study.
The leaders also began to make connections with other practitioners and
researchers involved in lesson study efforts emerging across the U.S., an
experience that led them to see SMFC’s role in a larger nationwide lesson study
movement. The leaders wanted teacher participants also to understand their role
as pioneers in a national movement.
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Lesson Study Implementation, Year Two
With a deeper understanding of lesson study and what they could gain from
it, district leaders also realized the need to revise some of the processes they had
developed in the first year, and a number of modifications were made in the
seven implementation steps. One noteworthy characteristic of year two was the
extent to which the leaders reached beyond their own district for guidance on
how to refine their lesson study work. In this respect, the district's lesson study
effort became more of an open system in year two: Through their emphasis on
and ability to span their own district boundaries, they learned from others and
developed a niche and reputation for themselves and their district in the broader
education system. In a sense, the lesson study cycle of planning, doing,
reflecting, and revising was being applied not just by individual lesson study
groups to their topics, but by the leaders to the district's lesson study process as a
whole.
A second noteworthy difference in implementation between years one and
two was the rate at which the district cycled through the implementation steps.
In the second year, leaders organized a two-week summer institute, a spring
lesson study open house, and support for ongoing lesson study groups
throughout the year. Hence teachers were able to cycle through the stages of
implementation at an accelerated rate, allowing learning and adaptation of the
lesson study model to happen in a more continuous way. In year two, the
district's lesson study effort became more about continuous improvement than a
sequence of implementation steps.
Step 1: Learning about lesson study. When they began lesson study,
leaders’ knowledge of lesson study was drawn mostly from Japanese models,
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including live and videotaped demonstrations and written descriptions of
Japanese lesson study. As the innovation spread nationally and district leaders
faced the need for more information to refine their lesson study processes, lesson
study resources were growing in number and changing in form. Table 3 displays
the lesson study resources that were available to SMFC educators in the first and
second years of implementation. It shows the increased use in year two (boldface
type) of district experience doing lesson study and of the experiences of other
lesson study practitioners (both Japanese and American).
Collaborative lesson study with other Japanese and American practitioners
proved to be an especially important learning resource for SMFC educators,
because they could see alternate approaches to lesson study and discuss areas in
which they had difficulty. A two-week summer institute, jointly planned by us
and SMFC educators, brought together SMFC and Japanese educators to learn
about geometry and lesson study, including about 25 SMFC educators, six
Japanese educators, two teachers from School Two in Paterson New Jersey and
ten observers from other parts of the U.S.. The conference demonstrated nine
mathematics lessons that were jointly planned, taught, and discussed by groups
of Japanese or U.S. teachers. American lesson study groups taught four research
lessons; Japanese lesson study groups taught five research lessons, allowing
participants to observe and learn from both expert and novice lesson study
practitioners.
District leaders reported that the summer institute provided an intensive
"shot in the arm" that they needed to further their learning and notice fine points
of lesson study. As one district leader said, by organizing the summer workshop
after their initial year of implementation, they were able to gain more than they
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might have in the previous summer because they could make connections to
their existing lesson study knowledge. Another district leader remarked:
Having the Japanese teachers there was incredible. All of their lessons were
really fascinating and interesting and it was reassuring for teachers to see
Japanese teachers having the same kinds of struggles that we have – they
didn’t do everything perfectly. Sometimes the materials management wasn’t
perfect or they didn’t get everything included in the lesson. They’re not
necessarily gods.... But they did have these great lessons, too.... so it made it
seem really attainable. And then also to have the whole process modeled.
So what they did seemed attainable and acceptable to us. It wasn’t like, “Oh,
we’ll never figure out how to do that.” It kind of demystified it – “Yeah, we
can do that.”
Teachers also commented on how the summer institute deepened their
understanding of lesson study. For example, one teacher, who experienced
lesson study for the first time during the summer workshop commented:
[Afterwards] I had a better understanding of what lesson study was.
[Earlier] I had this misperception of what lesson study was – you create a
lesson, people watch you and it's over. I didn't realize that there was so
much dialogue before and after and how that dialogue, I think, is much more
important than the actual lesson. Because that's where you're growing as
professionals, you know? ....It was nice to be working.... as professionals and
not just.... that teacher talk that you do in the teachers' room.
This focus on doing lesson study was carried over into the second school
year with two additional events. A research lesson and debriefing session were
organized at one school that had decided to expand lesson study school-wide to
introduce it to the staff in an authentic way. The district also organized a lesson
study open house, scheduled for Spring, 2002, in which both Japanese and SMFC
educators would demonstrate and discuss lesson study. Both events built on
relationships with individuals and materials that had been developed over the
summer. A district leader commented on the usefulness of these public events:
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That [summer workshop] was kind of like we were learning, learning,
learning and then [sound effect] this huge shot in the arm. We learned a lot
really quickly. It was really good for the momentum to have an intensive
experience too. And I think that the open house in the spring is going to
have that effect again.... You know, there is going to be another jolt of
learning.
As lesson study was being tried out in different locations throughout the
country – for example, Paterson, New Jersey, Bellevue, Washington and
Nashville, Tennessee – different ideas about lesson study were emerging and
information about these efforts was made available through personal
networking, conferences, the internet, and print and video resources. For
example, an internet-based lesson study listserve and a lesson study discussion
forum were developed by researchers and technical assistance providers, lesson
study was a significant focus at several state and national mathematics
conferences, and research reports on other U.S. lesson study efforts were
emerging. District leaders drew on information about these other lesson study
models to motivate their own lesson study effort.
Expanded documentation of SMFC lesson study activities provided a third
important element of year two learning. New forms of documentation included
several added to the summer workshop: daily reflection forms, interviews with
both U.S. and Japanese lessons study groups, collection of lesson artifacts (lesson
plans, student work, teachers' lesson observation notes) and observation and
videotaping of research lessons and lesson discussions. During the school year,
additional documentation included a reflection form to track teachers' learning
throughout the school year, observations of the meetings of several lesson study
groups, and interviews designed to elicit information about lesson study goals
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and processes. As one leader reported, this research made a difference because it
provided an outside perspective on their own effort:
Your involvement forced us to get clearer about what we're doing. And
that's always a good thing. I mean, we can hardly tell you what we're doing
if we don't know; we have to try to clarify it. The documentation.... We
would have always known.... that that would be a really important thing to
be doing and we would have never gotten past the smallest tiny step.
Because there are just not enough hours in the day to do our work, let alone
try to take on new things like this and do that too.
Step 2: Shaping the lesson study model. Table 4 highlights features of the
SMFC lesson study model in years one and two. As the boldface type illustrates,
three major refinements to the SMFC lesson study model in year two centered on
the activities expected of the participants. Leaders added two previously
omitted activities – goal-setting and ongoing reflection – and asked for final
lesson plans to be accompanied by a synopsis of learning that happened as a
result of the lesson study work. Although they had consciously skipped goal-
setting during year one in order to save time, they realized the value of goal-
setting in helping teachers to establish a common direction for the research
lesson, connect the lesson to their long-term goals for students, and thereby
increase the motivation to do lesson study. In year two, although district leaders
did not require that each lesson study group do a goal-setting activity, several of
the groups worked with district leaders to establish specific goals for their lesson
study work. Refinements in the training process and materials facilitated this
shift toward goal-setting. Throughout the second year district leaders continued
to struggle with how to facilitate the goal-setting process to help lesson study
groups develop meaningful goals.
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As the leaders began to see lesson study as a way to build thoughtfulness
about instruction, and not just a way to plan a lesson, they began to realize the
importance of helping teachers reflect on the lesson study work. They also began
to see that simply sharing lesson plans over the district intranet – without
evidence of what had been learned in the process – did not necessarily support
one another’s learning from the lesson study work. As one district leader
reported:
I think what we've realized now is that we have to have a reflection piece in
there as well. And that wasn't something that jumped out at us about the
Japanese model. We didn't notice that at first. It wasn't until we were doing
it that we realized, oh yeah, that's a real big piece of it. When we had read....
that you go to bookstores and you buy these books ....[of] lessons that have
been taught, we thought that was just a sharing of the lesson and not
necessarily a sharing of everything that had been also learned along the way.
So I think the first year, that wasn't part of what we saw as the model for
lesson study.
A second set of changes to the lesson study design stemmed from the greater
funding available the second year. Increased funding (due to successful external
grant requests written by the leaders) enabled support for lesson study in
language arts as well as math and additional funding for substitutes. Increased
substitute time was provided because district leaders and participants
recognized how valuable, yet how time-consuming, teachers' collaboration was.
Also in recognition of the time-consuming nature of collaboration, the leaders
revised downward their expectations about how many research lessons each
group would complete during the school year from three (the year one request)
to one or two. This shift was expected to enable teachers to delve more deeply
into each lesson.
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Step 3: Leveraging support for the lesson study effort: Leaders applied for
and received funding from both a local and a national foundation and a local
school change project. The opportunity for the program officer to participate
firsthand in lesson study during the summer workshop was instrumental in
obtaining local funding. The external funds supported teachers’ attendance at
the summer workshop (most of them new to lesson study), extension of lesson
study to new schools where teachers had not previously participated, and
extension to language arts. One leader reported that the option to focus on
language arts during year two opened up lesson study to teachers who were not
comfortable with mathematics.
A school-wide "lesson study lab school" also emerged in year two, at a school
where four teachers had participated in lesson study during year one, and where
a staff poll indicated widespread interest in devoting two out of four staff
meetings per month to lesson study. The school-wide effort received further
support when one of the original lesson study leaders became the school’s
principal following transfer of the prior principal. New participants at the school
were able to draw on the experience of teachers who had participated in lesson
study during the first year or summer workshop. Although these teachers spoke
about lesson study’s difficulty, they also affirmed its worth.
During year one, the leaders supported lesson study mainly by securing
funds and serving as “lead learners”
10
alongside the rest of the participants.
During year two, the leaders expanded their conception of support to include
other outside specialists. The summer workshop dramatically illustrated the
value of outside expertise in lesson study and subject matter, as participants
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learned new strategies for organizing the debriefing session around key
questions, and were provoked to think about the big ideas in geometry. In year
two, leaders encouraged lesson study groups to involve outsiders at all stages of
their lesson study work, and they recruited specialists with mathematics and
language arts expertise to provide feedback on lesson plans from the earliest
stages of planning.
Step 4: Recruiting and training lesson study participants: During year one,
leaders believed it would be challenging to interest teachers in a new approach to
professional development, and they targeted their recruitment toward what one
leader dubbed "early innovators." Recruitment during year two was made easier
by the testimonials of teachers who had participated and the credibility provided
by external funding.
The leaders reported that they changed each training event during the first
year as their own experience with lesson study increased; Table 6 reveals
substantial change, also, from year one to year two. For example, during year
one training events were organized at the district level, but by year two several
events were held at the site level, at schools that had a critical mass of teachers
interested in lesson study. Another change from year one to year two was the
addition of intensive, multi-day learning opportunities, like the summer
workshop and week-long spring open house during which teachers could
observe lesson study in action, participate, and apply as well as acquire
knowledge about it.
In the second year, leaders had videotape and print resources that showed
both U.S. and Japanese lesson study models and that enabled new participants to
10
We are indebted to Lynn Liptak for this term; see Lewis, 2002.
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explore some of the more difficult aspects of lesson study before they tried it.
For example, in year two, teachers viewed and discussed a videotape of San
Mateo teachers conducting lesson study that illustrated some of the difficulties in
anticipating student thinking. In year two, leaders emphasized to new
participants that they were not trying to recreate a Japanese lesson study model,
but rather that they were building their own lesson study model adapted to their
specific circumstances. As one leader described the change:
[At first] we wanted to explain to people what lesson study looked like in
Japan. Now when we do it, we give people the idea that lesson study came
from Japan and what it looks like in Japan, but then we also really paint a
picture of what it looks like here in San Mateo because now we can talk
about that.
The capacity to draw on US models of lesson study – particularly one
developed in their own district – and distinguish it from Japanese lesson study
seemed to make lesson study less threatening to new participants.
Step 5: Doing lesson study. The district as a whole implemented two lesson
study cycles during year two: one during the summer workshop and one during
the school year (still in progress). Table 7 shows some of the differences in lesson
study implementation between years one and two, including increased use of
guidelines and outside specialists during year two.
During the two-week summer workshop, four lesson study groups spent
about eight hours collaboratively planning lessons taught the following week
and observed by the planning group and other workshop participants (about 20
people). With the assistance of an outside moderator, the teachers who planned
the lesson discussed it and then invited audience members to comment and ask
questions. All of the lessons and discussion sessions were videotaped.
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Leaders made two changes to the lesson study guidelines for the summer
workshop. First, they provided a lesson plan template (based on a lesson plan
developed by a Japanese teacher who taught during the workshop; see Appendix
A) and asked teachers to use this it to guide their planning. A second change
was to ask teachers to complete daily reflection forms describing their learning.
Comments were read daily and used to make adjustments to the workshop.
During the school year, 61 teachers formed into 15 lesson study groups at
nine schools. Of these teachers, 35 were new to lesson study. While the groups’
work is still unfolding, it seems that the templates and use of outside specialists
are being embraced by at least some groups. For example, one school-wide
group and one four-person team set goals for their lesson study work using a
tool provided by Lewis, based on Japanese practice (see Appendix B). Another
group reported that consultation with a local literacy expert led them to shift
their research lesson topic, and their approach to instruction. One leader
described the shift:
Their lesson study group was working on literacy issues – they're the
third through fifth grade teachers for the second language learners at
[school name]. And they were working around a particular problem of
kids who seemed to be stuck at… at a particular guided reading level.
…They brought in some expertise, and it really raised their consciousness
about issues of phonemic awareness… They wouldn't even have been
investigating this otherwise, and felt like suddenly now they were doing a
lot more other instruction around phonemic awareness for these kids and
finding that… they were making great gains in their benchmarks for
reading. And they arrived at that because of being interested in thinking
about it for their lesson study. And it wasn't about just one lesson; it was
about this is a whole piece of our instruction that we should be focusing
more on.
During year two, leaders offered teachers more guidance on debriefing,
following a Japanese model from the summer workshop, in which discussion
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focused on three or four important questions about the lesson or about learning
more broadly. U.S. teachers welcomed this format, since they had been
dissatisfied with their previous format for discussing lessons:
Our past experience with lesson study… when we’re debriefing the lesson,
we usually just get together and everybody talks as fast as they can about
everything they remember and what impressed them. So we’re trying to
learn to be more systematic about how to debrief a lesson.
Teachers were also asked to reflect on their group’s learning at the end of
meeting, using a very brief reflection instrument available on the district's
computer server so that groups could complete their reflections on-line. Despite
the shortness and easy accessibility of the reflection instrument, leaders found
that teachers still have difficulty finding the time to do this type of reflection.
A mid-year (winter) district-wide meeting of all lesson study participants
also reflected changes from year one to year two. While it was regarded in both
years as an opportunity to hear teachers' feedback on lesson study and to make
mid-year corrections, in year two leaders regarded it also as a chance to build
lesson study momentum and provide moral and professional support for
participants. Leaders observed that the second year’s meeting focused on
specific reports of lesson study activities, rather than generic comments about
lesson study.
Step 6: Reflecting on lesson study. Leaders reflected on what they had
learned about lesson study, in order to share their knowledge with others. One
leader summarized a list of their learning, compiled prior to a meeting with
county educators:
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District leader: We have things [on our list of what we have learned] like
the importance of reflection. You need to build it in along the way – that's
the only way to collect it. And that it has to be there – we didn't do that the
first year. The impact of having knowledgeable others involved… Not
deciding on who is going to teach the lesson… And then the idea about it is
really important to take the time to get the big picture about what they're
teaching… Like we're going to teach fractions with unlike denominators and
you kind of want to jump into that thing, but you really have to spend time
talking about it in a big way before you can hone in on that particular skill.
Interviewer: So, focusing on the content instead of the curriculum?
District leader: Exactly. And then articulating it. What's before? What's
after? What are we assuming that kids already know? What do we have to
be able to build on? Having a format for the post-lesson discussion and
really focusing those lesson discussions… We learned that students are
incredibly flexible – you can put 30 people in a room to watch them and it's
no big deal. We also learned that teachers are much more flexible than we
thought. And I know a lot of people say, "Oh, teachers would never do that."
And they do. It's not a big deal. That it spreads teacher to teacher. In places
where it's grown, it's not because an administrator said "It's because I want
you guys to do this." It was because other teachers were excited and said
"Oh, you should do this." And there isn't one right way to do this.
The summer workshop provided opportunities to see how collaboration
among teachers and use of outside specialists each promoted learning. A lesson
planning session among SMFC teachers during the first week of the summer
workshop, illustrates how teachers' collaborative work led them to new
understandings about mathematics, specifically triangles. In this situation,
elementary teachers were planning a lesson designed to help third grade
students learn that a triangle has three straight sides and that there are different
shapes of triangles:
Teacher 1: [In the lesson] is the teacher… identifying only the three
[triangles] that are in the third grade standards? So it's just equilateral,
isosceles, and right? We're not going into scalene?
Teacher 2: But what about scalene?
Teacher 3: Absolutely we should have scalene, because if a child says
"there are four kinds [of triangles]", then go with it.
Teacher 1: And obtuse?
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Teacher 4: That's an angle.
Teacher 1: But in here [district mathematics standards], it's an obtuse
triangle. And in that test…
Teacher 3: It was an obtuse scalene triangle.
Teacher 2: [Points to an example of a triangle] So is that a scalene?
Teacher 3: [Refers to material she brought in about triangles] What does
it say?: "A scalene has no equal sides and an obtuse scalene has one angle
larger than ninety degrees and no equal sides."
Teacher 4: …I guess I always picture a scalene [triangle] with an obtuse
angle.
Teacher 3: …You know, we get locked into the pictures that are in the
textbooks and we think that's that triangle.
Teacher 2: So we're going to put right triangle under…?
Teacher 3: Isosceles, equilateral, and scalene. I think we absolutely need
be ready for scalene.
Teacher 4: And do we do a right triangle?
Teacher 1: That's one of the standards.
Teacher 3: So, actually, we should be doing four triangles.
Teacher 2: So then we have to talk about angles. They're going to ask
how come it's called a right triangle and you're going to have to tell them
about ninety degrees.
Teacher 1: …Aren't all right triangles scalene, by the Pythagorean
theorem? They have to be, right? They have to be.
Teacher 4: No, you have two lengths that are the same length – that's
where your right angle is. And then your longer one could be your
connector.
As their planning work continued, teachers built and discussed different types of
triangles, and arrived at an answer to Teacher 1's question about the difference
between right and scalene triangles for themselves.
A second example is drawn from a discussion of a lesson designed by U.S.
teachers to help fifth grade students identify critical attributes of polygons. In
that discussion, a Japanese educator commented that the most important element
of geometry in the elementary grades was learning how to investigate geometric
shapes. In reflecting on this comment, a SMFC teacher said:
I'm still stunned by what Mr. Takahashi said. And I'll just share with you
and just stick my neck out. Maybe I'm the only one here who is stunned by
that. He said how to investigate geometric shapes is the most important part
of elementary geometry. How come I don't know that? Am I the only one
here who doesn't know that? So, step number one, I would say for us in
America is that we need to know what exactly is the most important thing
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about our curriculum. And if they [students] don't get anything else, can
they recognize that these shapes are comprised of different attributes.
Because as we're crafting the lessons, if we don't know that, then we're just
walking around in the dark. And maybe we'll bang into the wall, and maybe
we won't.
In reflecting on what they learned from working with the Japanese teachers
and seeing their lessons, SMFC teachers mentioned the idea of limiting the
number of mathematical ideas in a lesson and purposefully connecting the lesson
activities to the lesson’s goal. In response to a question about what she had
learned, one SMFC teacher wrote: "The importance of flow and continuity in a
lesson. Does each part of the lesson further strengthen the ultimate learning
objective? Are steps in a lesson building toward conceptual understanding?"
Teachers also reported gaining new perspectives on how to use materials, for
example, making sure that manipulatives and worksheets designed to support
the lesson did not distract students from the lesson goal. In addition, after
watching their Japanese colleagues, U.S. teachers commented on the value of
letting students struggle to find their own answers and of exposing students'
misunderstandings, in order to promote deeper understanding of a concept.
Two teachers commented:
I've been thinking a lot about our mindsets about our kids…. And my own
struggle as a math teacher and not giving them the answer – letting them
struggle. .…What if we had the mindset that we were teaching geniuses –
that we were teaching an advanced class … How much.…are we not letting
them discover because we don't think they can? ….Would our teaching be
different if we were thinking we were teaching geniuses?
I saw that bringing out student misunderstandings about a math concept
was healthy and part of a process of deeper understanding.… Step back and
let kids think and struggle.
During year two, leaders also gained know-how about ways to facilitate
collaboration within the lesson study groups. For example, they recommended
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33
(based on the experience of one group during the summer workshop) that
teachers finish most of the lesson planning before selecting the teacher that
would teach the research lesson, a strategy that seemed to increase teachers' joint
ownership of the lesson during the planning process. The leaders also added
several tools and processes to guide group work, including a goal-setting
process, reflection questions to help teachers think about what they were
learning from their lesson study experiences, a lesson plan template, structure for
lesson debriefing, and recommendation of involvement from subject matter
specialists.
The leaders were initially apprehensive about the summer workshop, and
particularly about asking students and teachers to accommodate up to 20 lesson
observers, many of them from another country. The leaders decided to move
forward, and they found that both students and teachers adapted gracefully and
gained much more from the experience than anyone had imagined. The summer
workshop experience reinforced the lessons of year one, with greater depth:
Leaders saw the importance of content expertise and lesson study guidelines,
and the saw how much could be learned from actually trying lesson study.
Table 8 summarizes some of the lessons learned by SMFC educators.
Step 7: Sharing the knowledge with others. By year two, lesson study had
begun to spread not just within the district but within the U.S. As a result, the
leaders had more opportunities to talk about lesson study to others outside the
district who were interested in learning about and trying it. (These opportunities
often overlapped with SMFC educators' own resources for learning about lesson
study, shown in Table 3.) Their active effort to share their ongoing learning about
lesson study, through invited and self-initiated presentations at county, state,
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34
and national conferences, revealed underlying assumptions about the value of
support from a broader mathematics reform community and the difficulty of
engaging in reform in isolation. One district leader commented that the future of
lesson study would depend on individuals in different places developing strong
connections so that they could learn from each other.
IV. What Role Should Research Play in Lesson Study?
Our account documents numerous refinements of SMFC’s lesson study
model over the first two years, including changes in goals, structures, supports,
and the use of outside expertise. These refinements underscore the significant
learning of project leaders and the changes for participants over this brief period.
The data also provide evidence of progress in three out of four goal areas
originally targeted by the leaders. (Impact on student learning was considered a
more distal goal.) What are the implications of these early findings on the SMFC
experience for lesson study practice and the broader enterprise of educational
research in the U.S.?
Implication #1. More models are needed of research that constructively
contributes to innovations in progress. We found relatively few examples of
research designed to gather information from busy practitioners and rapidly use
it to understand and promote improvement of an innovation in progress (for
some exceptions, see Center for Research on the Context of Teaching, 2000,
McLaughlin & Talbert, 1998, Schön & McDonald, unpublished; Schön (1991);
Geiser & Berman, 2000; Berman & Chambliss, 2000). We wished for more
examples of such research as we fashioned and re-fashioned data collection
strategies, including leader and participant interviews, surveys, and observations
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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of lesson study activities, in order to help leaders identify and address successes
and rough spots in implementation in a timely fashion.
We drew some valuable guidance from Chen’s (1990) Theory-driven
Evaluations, which advocates that researchers first construct a theory of action
based on input from stakeholders. By eliciting information from stakeholders at
particular points in the evolution of the reform, theory-driven research can adapt
to practitioners' changes in goals or implementation plans. Theory-driven
research builds on what educational researchers have documented about the
difficult, unpredictable, and incremental nature of change (Fullan, 1991;
Lindblom & Cohen, 1979; Williams & Elmore, 1976; Dobson & Cook, 1980) by
encouraging researchers to pay attention to both planned and implemented
change (Weatherley & Lipsky, 1977, Leithwood & Montgomery, 1980).
Additional research models may help us in the research community develop
"best practices" that are most effective for understanding and advancing complex
educational innovations such as lesson study.
Implication #2. Theory-building research on lesson study is needed. One
case does not make a theory. Isolated case studies of lesson study’s success or
failure are less useful to the research enterprise – or to practitioners interested in
adopting the reform – than would be a coherent theoretical model of lesson
study’s development that emerged across studies, and could be used by new
practitioners or tested by researchers studying new cases.
One solution to these issues may be to utilize approaches designed to build
theory across individual cases, such as “design research” or “design
experiments” in mathematics and science education (Confrey & Lachance, 2000;
Lehrer & Schauble, 2001). Additional cases can be designed so that they respond
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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to the theoretical models developed by prior research. The SMFC case study
suggests a number of propositions that might be incorporated into a theoretical
model of lesson study: for example, that benefits of collaboration need to be
experienced before teachers can see why lesson study might be useful; that first-
hand experiences of lesson study provide greater “jolts of learning” than written
materials or presentations; that word-of-mouth among teachers is an effective
spread mechanism for lesson study; that observation and discussion guidelines
promote effective lesson study; and that teachers regard their improved
understanding of learning, students and subject matter as more important
benefits of lesson study than the lesson plans themselves.
Implication #3. Assessing “the effectiveness of lesson study” is
problematic. Educators often ask us whether there is proof of lesson study’s
effectiveness. Behind this question seems to be the assumption that lesson study
should be tested and proven in one site before broad dissemination, much like a
vaccine or piece of computer software is tested and then disseminated. When is
it reasonable to test the effectiveness of an innovation like Japanese lesson study,
which includes a complex set of practices supported by educational system
features, school and local culture, curriculum, tangible and intangible resources,
and an enormous amount of know-how, very little of which is currently known
to U.S. researchers? Interestingly, our Japanese research colleagues tell us that,
despite lesson study’s 100-year history in Japan, there are no research studies of
its effectiveness (Ikeda, 2001). While Japanese teachers conducting research
lessons scour their classrooms for evidence on student learning, motivation, and
development, and while Japanese teachers frequently ask how lesson study can
be made more effective in their setting, they do not ask the general question “Is
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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lesson study effective?” This question is a lot like asking, “Is teaching effective?”
The answer is always “It depends.”
Educator Deborah Loewenberg Ball (1996) has suggested that all significant
reform should probably be viewed not as “’implementation’ of programs” but as
“adaptation and generation of new knowledge." Shifting from a view of reform
as a fixed thing to reform as knowledge adaptation and generation has important
implications for researchers. We need to focus on reform’s unfolding at
particular sites, and what these sites can tell us about the model features and
local conditions that contributed to or detracted from helping these sites reach
their reform goals. If all reform is local (like all politics is local), the question “Is
lesson study effective?” should seem as hopelessly general as the question “Is
teaching effective?” Such an overly simple question can contribute to the
rejection of innovations that haven’t yet been deeply or thoughtfully
implemented, and to the rapid cycling of educational fads.
Implication #4. Rethink the types of educational research we value. Our
experience in San Mateo-Foster City points up that the information requested
and valued by practitioners is not necessarily the same as the information valued
by the educational research community. For example, one of the first questions
SMFC educators asked us was “What is a good agenda to support a research
lesson discussion?” Looking across videotapes from research lesson discussions
in Japan, we noticed that the agenda typically allows the lesson instructor to
speak first, allows co-planners to speak next, provides a facilitator, and provides
minimal time for free discussion that might turn into grandstanding. In
addition, the quality of data collected during the research lesson greatly shapes
discussion quality. Considerable resources and know-how about lesson study
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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exist in Japan, but have generally not been translated and provided to U.S.
audiences. Most researchers (ourselves included) have focused on the big
picture of lesson study, not the detailed know-how needed for it to work. In the
world of educational research, big, new ideas like lesson study are sexy, but the
know-how to make them work is not. Should we rethink our values?
Other resources highly valued by the SMFC practitioners included the lesson
plans and curriculum materials that Japanese teachers use to guide their lesson
study work, videotapes of lesson study in Japan, protocols for observation and
discussion of lessons
11
, and live observation of Japanese practitioners’ lesson
study, at the summer workshop and the Greenwich Japanese School and in
Japan. Several SMFC teachers remarked that they thought they understood
lesson study before the summer workshop with Japanese practitioners, but that
they understood it in a much deeper way after working with Japanese
colleagues. Researchers have a potentially important role to play in
systematically developing and studying such experiences, but such research may
not be broadly valued. As one educational researcher commented, it “falls in
between the research section and the community service section of our vitas.”
12
The range of Japanese lesson study models currently available to U.S.
educators is extremely limited. A single in-depth example of lesson study is
available: the dissertation of Makoto Yoshida, which chronicles lesson study at a
single Japanese elementary school and which provided the basis for The Teaching
Gap’s account of lesson study. Although we have studied (with Ineko Tsuchida)
over 50 research lessons, the time spent in each school has typically been just a
11
For example, those developed by the lesson study research group at Teachers College,
Columbia University http://www.tc.columbia.edu/lessonstudy/ or lsrg@columbia.edu.
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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few days. Imagine trying to characterize all of U.S. professional development
based on an in-depth case study of one site and observation of fifty workshops!
U.S. educators cannot be blamed for drawing heavily on the one case study and
several videotapes of Japanese lesson study that exist. But we should recognize
that these represent specific contexts, and that the essential and unique features
of these lesson study examples have yet to be distinguished (Lewis, 2002).
Mathematics educator Takashi Nakamura (Ishikawa et al., 2001) points out
that Japanese lesson study is not a single entity, and he classifies it into three
major types, according to whether its primary purpose is: (1) to solve an
educational problem through development of new curriculum or instructional
approaches; (2) to enable individual practitioners to freshly examine their own
practice in order to improve it; or (3) to stimulate a shared community of practice
among teachers within a setting. He goes on to outline the many ways that
lesson study differs according to its primary purpose. Nakamura’s classification
suggests how very limited the English-language accounts of Japanese lesson
study currently are. Unfortunately, however, documentation of Japanese lesson
study cannot be done well without strong background knowledge of the
Japanese educational system and of the Japanese language. Yet language and
cultural competence (in Japan or other geographical areas) does not seem to be
valued by education departments to the extent that it is by many other
disciplines. Departments of history, anthropology, literature, sociology, religion,
art and business regularly advertise for faculty with a background in Japanese
language and culture, but rarely does one see similar advertisements from
education departments.
12
Comment by Jere Brophy, 3/16/02, Conference on Design Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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Lesson study is a simple idea, but a very complex process. Who will do the
hard work of documenting the know-how of lesson study and the particular
adaptations and conditions that make it work (or fail) at U.S. sites? As an
educational research community, we are addicted to the interesting new idea.
Are we also willing to do the steady, long-term work of figuring out how the
idea can actually be made to work in the real world?
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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Figure 1: Stages of Lesson Study Implementation in the SMFCSD: Spring
2000 – Spring 2002
Step 1: Learning
about lesson study
Step 2: Shaping the
lesson study model
Step 3: Leveraging
support for lesson study
Step 4: Recruiting/ training
lesson study participants
Step 5: Doing lesson
study
Step 6: Reflecting on
lesson study
Step 7: Sharing the
knowledge with others
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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Table 1: Timeline of Lesson Study Activities in the SMFCSD: Spring 2000-
Spring 2002
Year 1 – Spring 2000-Spring 2001 Year 2 – Summer 2001 –
Spring 2002
spring summer fall winter spring summer fall winter spring
Step 1: Learning
about lesson study
X
13
XXXX XXX X
Step 2: Shaping the
lesson study model
XX XXXX
Step 3: Leveraging
support for lesson
study
XX XXXXX
Step 4: Recruiting/
training lesson
study
participants
XX XX X
Step 5: Doing
lesson study
XX X X X X X
Step 6: Reflecting
on lesson study
XX X X X X X
Step 7: Sharing the
knowledge with
others
XXXXX
13
"X" indicates that this implementation activity occurred during this time period.
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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Table 2: Preliminary and Revised SMFCSD Lesson Study Goals
Year 1 – Spring 2000-Spring 2001 Year 2 – Summer 2001 – Spring 2002
Goal 1: More Effective Professional Development Model
Lesson study as an institutionalized
form of professional development
in the district.
Teachers who feel empowered to
provide their own professional
development and improve the
profession.
Teachers who draw on the
knowledge of their peers.
Teachers who are excited and
enthusiastic about lesson study.
Teachers who recognize their role
in the development of a U.S.
innovation; teachers who feel they
are part of a national reform effort.
Teachers who understand the value
of lesson study beyond a single
lesson.
Teachers who see that lesson study
can support the implementation of
other curricula or programs.
Goal 2: Teacher Collaboration
Teachers who collaborate with
other teachers about math/science
they are teaching.
A culture of collaboration within
schools.
Teachers who discover the value of
collaboration.
Teachers who understand what
good collaboration is, who are good
collaborators, and who understand
the role that they play in being a
good collaborator.
Goal 3: Improved Instructional Practice
Improved classroom practice.
Improved math lessons.
Teachers who understand how to
teach better.
Teachers who think deeply about
math/science they are teaching.
Teachers who think deeply about
learning and curriculum.
Teachers who link content and
pedagogy.
Goal 4: Student Mathematics Understanding
Greater student understanding of
math
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Table 3: Preliminary and Revised SMFCSD Resources for Learning about
Lesson Study
Year 1 – Spring 2000-Spring 2001 Year 2 – Summer 2001 – Spring 2002
Observation/ Participation:
Personal experiences watching Japanese
lesson study:
Travel to Japan with NCTM
educators to observe/ participate in
lesson study
Attendance at Greenwich Japanese
School Lesson Study Open House
Observation/ Participation:
Personal experiences doing lesson
study:
Local two-week summer institute
with experienced Japanese and U.S.
lesson study practitioners.
School-wide open house at lesson
study lab school.
Springtime district-wide open
house.
Networking:
Use of established relationships
with Japanese educators, developed
through travel to Japan.
Lesson study presentations by
Lewis.
Networking:
Use of established relationships
with Japanese educators, developed
through summer workshop and
previous travel to Japan.
Person-to-person contact through
state- and nationwide conferences
and a lesson study listserve, with
other U.S. lesson study
practitioners.
Print materials:
Stigler & Hiebert's The Teaching Gap;
Lewis' and Yoshida's research on
Japanese lesson study, lesson plans and
lesson study protocol provided at
Greenwich Open House.
Print materials:
Pre-publication draft of lesson study
handbook (Lewis, in press); Fernandez
et al. (2001); Northwest Teacher
(Stepanek, et al., 2001)
Video materials:
Lewis' research on Japanese lesson
study (Can you Lift 100 Kg?); TIMSS
videos of Japanese teaching.
Video materials:
Three Perspectives on Lesson Study,
(Regents of the University of
California, 2001); videotapes of SMFC
teachers from summer workshop
Feedback:
Establishment of collaborative and
support relationship with researchers
Lewis and Perry.
Feedback:
Continuation of collaboration with
Lewis and Perry
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Table 4: Preliminary and Revised Features of the SMFCSD Lesson Study
Model
Year 1 – Spring 2000-Spring 2001 Year 2 – Summer 2001 – Spring 2002
Four basic steps:
Collaborative lesson planning,
Teaching/ observing a lesson;
Discussing/ revising/ (possibly)
reteaching the lesson;
Publication of the lesson on the
district intranet
Six basic steps:
Goal-setting
Collaborative lesson planning,
Teaching/ observing a lesson;
Discussing/ revising/ (possibly)
reteaching the lesson
On-going reflection
Publication of the lesson and
learning synopsis on the district
intranet
Math/ science Math/ science/ language arts
Elementary and middle school
volunteers, organized into small teams
of ~3-5 teachers
Continued
One year commitment required, with
stipend for 20 hours of work
Continued
Substitutes available to cover classes
during lesson and debriefing (3 half
day subs per teacher)
2 full day or 4 half day subs per
teacher
Up to 3 lessons per group expected 1 or 2 lessons per group expected
Continuing education credit available
Continued
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Table 5: Preliminary and Revised Support for SMFCSD Lesson Study
Year 1 – Spring 2000-Spring 2001 Year 2 – Summer 2001 – Spring 2002
Financial support:
Federal/district and local foundation
funding for math/ science lesson
study.
Financial support:
Federal/district funding, national and
local foundation funding, and funding
from local school change organization
for math/ science/ literacy lesson
study.
Administrative support:
Site and district administrators did not
"get in the way" but did not actively
support.
Administrative support:
Transition in district administration –
support unclear; one site administrator
agreed to support lesson study lab
school; other administrators do not
stand in the way – spring open house
to help build local administrative
support.
Advocacy:
Leaders
Advocacy:
Leaders and teachers who have
participated in lesson study
Specialist support:
District leaders/ coaches, Mills College
researchers, a few Japanese colleagues
called on to provide guidance
regarding overall implementation of
lesson study and content/ pedagogy.
Specialist support:
District leaders/ coaches, Mills College
researchers, Japanese and Paterson
School Two teachers, foundation
funder, school reform coach, other
local math/ literacy experts called on
to provide guidance on specific lesson
study steps and content/ pedagogy.
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Table 6: Preliminary and Revised SMFCSD Lesson Study Training
Year 1 – Spring 2000-Spring 2001 Year 2 – Summer 2001 – Spring 2002
One-day district-wide introductory
sessions
One-day district- and school-wide
introductory sessions and lesson study
sessions, two-week summer institute,
week-long lesson study open house
Informal discussion Prepared presentation slides
describing lesson study and its
relationship to qualities of effective
professional development; what lesson
study is and is not; what is involved
and expected from participants
Verbal guidance on steps to follow
What steps to take (as described in
Table 4)
What to consider during planning
(e.g., anticipating students'
responses)
What to focus on in the debriefing
("the lesson, not the teacher")
Written protocol about steps to follow
(see Appendix C), including:
how to select topic, plan the lesson
when to select the teacher to teach
the lesson
who to invite to the lesson
how to document what happens
Use of Japanese models to illustrate
lesson study process
Use of both Japanese and San Mateo
models to illustrate lesson study;
explicit discussion about not trying to
recreate the Japanese model
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Table 7: Preliminary and Revised SMFCSD Lesson Study Groupwork
Year 1 – Spring 2000-Spring 2001 Year 2 – Summer 2001 – Spring 2002
Participants:
28 teachers from 7 schools
Participants:
Summer workshop: 18 teachers from
10 schools, 2 districts;
School year: 61 teachers from 9
schools, including one school-wide
lesson study school
(14 teachers continuing from year 1; 10
teachers continuing from summer
workshop)
Guidelines:
Suggestions about what to address in
plan; no lesson plan template.
Guidelines:
Lesson study protocol, goal-setting and
lesson plan template, guidelines on
debriefing, reflection form.
Support:
Mathematics coaches on-call as needed
Support:
Mathematics coaches on-call as needed
or as group members, depending on
the group.
Specialists consulted for content and
pedagogical advice.
Outcomes:
Variation in adherence to suggested
lesson study activities
Outcomes:
Stronger adherence to suggested lesson
study activities.
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Table 8: Cumulative Reflections on Lesson Study
Lesson study is a process, not a format for lesson planning.
Lesson study spreads teacher-to-teacher, from their excitement; not by
mandate.
There is no one right way to do lesson study.
Lesson study must be balanced with – or provide a structure for – educators'
competing time demands.
Tools and guidelines can facilitate teacher collaboration (e.g., lesson study
protocol, lesson plan template, reflection form, goal-setting form, guiding
questions for debriefing session).
"Knowledgeable others" provide valuable content, pedagogy, and lesson
study support.
Lesson study should begin with an understanding of the "big picture"
(content).
Intensive, experiential learning experiences are most valuable for surfacing
content/ pedagogy issues.
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Appendix A: Lesson Plan Template
Mathematics Lesson Plan for Grade __
1. Title of Lesson .
2. Goal:
3. Relationship of the Lesson in the California Mathematics Standards
Grade Two
Grade Three
Grade Four
Grade Five
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4. Instruction of the Lesson
5. Lesson Procedure
Learning Activities Teacher Support Points of Evaluation
1. Introduction to the
Problem
2. Individual Problem
Solving
3. Comparing and
Discussing
4. Find the Solution to
the Problem
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
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5. Summing up
6. Evaluation:
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Appendix B: Goal-Setting Tool
Choosing a Lesson Study Theme
Think about the students you serve.
Your Ideals:
What qualities would you like these students to have 5 years
from now?
The Actual:
List their qualities now.
The Gap:
Compare the ideal and the actual. What are the gaps that you
would most like to work on?
The Research Theme: (long-term goal)
State positively the ideal student qualities you choose to work
on. For example:
Fundamental academic skills that will ensure students’
progress and a rich sense of human rights.
Your research theme:
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
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Appendix C: SMFC Lesson Study Protocol
1. Form a group of four to six people who are interested in doing Lesson
Study.
2. Decide on a regular time to meet.
3. Discuss a curriculum area of common interest or greatest need, decide
on a topic for your lesson study focus. Be sure to log your hours as you
meet.
4. Spend time researching and reflecting on the content standards related
to this topic. What experiences have students had in previous grades
related to this topic? What are they expected to master in your grade?
What will they be doing in the following grade level? What can you do to
help get them ready for future success? Are the content standards
reasonable? What will be developmentally appropriate for the students
you are targeting?
5. Pick a lesson that you could teach six weeks to two months out to give
yourselves time to plan the lesson. You need about three to eight hours to
plan the lesson. This time can vary widely based on if you are using a
preexisting lesson from district curriculum or starting from scratch. For
first time lesson study groups we advise choosing an existing lesson and
modifying it to make it more effective.
6. Continue to meet to plan and fine tune the lesson. During this period
in the lesson study process it is best to not have meetings too spread out.
Meet weekly if possible until the lesson is ready. Spend the last five
minutes of each meeting writing a summary of what was discussed and
what your plans are for the next meeting.
7. Prepare to teach the lesson. Select a teacher to teach the lesson. Which
classroom will be used? Call Jackie Hurd and request sub access
numbers. Please select two possible dates. The more lead time we have
to access numbers the more likely you are to get the dates you request.
Do you want full or half day subs?
8. Consider who to invite to your lesson.
Please advise if we can invite teachers from other schools who are
interested in the same topic or grade to observe your lesson. Would you
like an “outside expert” invited to observe and comment on the lesson?
Please consider video taping or audio taping the lesson. Can
Rebecca Perry or a lesson study coordinator attend the lesson or lesson
planning process to help you further document and deepen your
understanding of the lesson study process?
Perry, Lewis, and Akiba © Mills College, 2002 AERA Session 13.41, New Orleans, 4/2/02
DRAFT Not for citation or circulation without authors' written permission
60
Will you invite your principal or any other teachers from your site?
9. Teach the lesson. Review the lesson study discussion protocol before
the lesson. Discuss what data you would like to collect during the lesson.
Assign roles for teacher observers.
10. Debrief the lesson. Choose a discussion moderator, focus the
discussion around key questions. Refer to the data collected.
11. Reflect and write up your learning from the process. Decide whether
to refine and reteach the lesson.
12. Prepare a final copy of the lesson plan and synopsis of the lesson
learning to post on the district intranet.
13. Celebrate the completion of your thoughtful work!
