Japanese lesson study: teacher professional development through communities of inquiry

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Deakin Research Online
This is the published version:
Doig, Brian and Groves, Susie 2011, Japanese lesson study : teacher professional
development through communities of inquiry, Mathematics teacher education and
development, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 77-93.
Available from Deakin Research Online:
http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30043312
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Copyright : 2011, MERGA

Japanese Lesson Study: Teacher Professional
Development through Communities of Inquiry
Brian Doig and Susie Groves
Deakin University
Japanese Lesson Study has come under increasing attention from educators in the
West and throughout South-East Asia since it was revealed outside Japan through the
release of the TIMSS Video Study. In this paper we argue that Japanese Lesson Study
provides a model for large scale, sustainable professional development. In particular,
we draw on our own experience of Japanese Lesson Study and the research literature
to describe its characteristic features and examine some of the cultural assumptions
that underpin its implementation.
Exploring mathematics with groups of people is inherently a cultural practice
(Kazemi, Elliott, Hubbard, Carroll, & Mumme, 2007, p. 797).
Japanese Lesson Study has come under increasing attention from educators in
the West and throughout South-East Asia since it was revealed outside Japan
through the release of the TIMSS Video Study (Stigler, Gonzalez, Kawanaka,
Knoll, & Serrano, 1999) and Yoshida’s doctoral dissertation (Yoshida, 1999; for a
description of the study in English, see Fernandez & Yoshida, 2004). Unlike many
Western initiatives, richly funded and mandated, Lesson Study in Japan is
neither funded nor mandatory. Essentially school-based and organised by
teachers themselves, it pervades primary school education – and to a lesser
extent secondary school education – across the country, with teachers
researching their own practice in school-based communities of inquiry.
This form of professional development is no longer restricted to Japan:
mathematics Lesson Study groups have been forming in the United States for
over ten years and now number more than eight hundred. In the United
Kingdom there has been growing interest in, and government support for,
Lesson Study as a powerful form of professional development (see, for example,
Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2008). Lesson Study has also
been introduced in South-East Asian countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia
(see, for example, White & Lim, 2008), as well as South America, South Africa
(Ono & Ferreira, 2010), and Australia (for example, Hollingsworth & Oliver,
2005). China too has a long history of improving teaching and learning through
school-based professional learning communities named Teacher Research
Groups (see, for example, Yang, 2009).
While Lesson Study takes place across all curriculum areas in Japan, it is
perhaps most commonly practised in mathematics, and this has tended to be the
case in other countries too.
Why has this form of professional development generated such widespread
interest? Is it because it encourages teachers to develop their own communities
Mathematics Teacher Education and Development 2011, Vol. 13.1, 77–93

of inquiry into their own teaching practices? Is it because it develops effective
teaching approaches? Or is it purely a cultural artefact?
In this paper, we argue that Japanese Lesson Study provides a model for
large-scale, sustainable professional development. In particular, we draw on our
own experience of Japanese Lesson Study and the research literature to describe
its characteristic features and examine some of the cultural assumptions that
underpin its implementation.
Teacher Professional Development
Teacher professional development is driven by the need to both extend and
renew teacher practice, skills and beliefs. Stimuli for such needs may be
curriculum change, new classroom technology, advances in pedagogy, or all of
these. However, the underlying endeavour is to improve outcomes for students,
whether they be focussed on understandings, skills, attitudes, or engagement.
Unfortunately, however, research evidence suggests that, despite the money,
time, and effort put into professional development for teachers, the outcomes are
not always as hoped. For example, Ingvarson, Beavis, Bishop, Peck, and Elsworth
(2004), reporting on findings from a large-scale study of secondary mathematics
teachers, found that the literature reviewed indicated that, “much professional
development appears to be ineffective” (p. 71). Reporting on a decade-long local
systemic change initiative based on teacher enhancement, Banilower, Boyd,
Pasley, and Weiss (2006) noted that “professional development sessions designed
to deepen content knowledge and support teachers’ content needs during imple-
mentation sometimes failed to delve into the very content they were designed to
address, due to more pressing teacher concerns such as materials management or
pedagogy” (p. 87). Further, Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, and
Orphanos (2009, p. 22) suggest that, “relatively few U.S. teachers engage in
intensive professional collaboration around curriculum planning”.
It is not surprising then, that international attention has turned to less
familiar, but apparently more successful, professional development practices,
such as Japanese Lesson Study.
In searching for features of successful teacher professional development,
Ingvarson et al. (2004) suggest that the relationship between student outcomes
and teachers’ development is reciprocal in that “the more successfully students
learn, the more likely it is that the teacher will adopt practices that encourage
further successful learning” (p. 23). In a similar vein, Royce (2010, p. 6) argues
that, “what we know to be true for students also applies in this [professional
development] situation to adults. That is, that teachers learn best by doing
[teaching mathematics] and building their own understandings rather than
being told”. This resonates strongly with Guskey’s (2002) re-iteration of his Model
of Teacher Change where he states that, “improvements typically result from
changes teachers have made in their classroom practices—a new instructional
approach, the use of new materials or curricula, or simply a modification in
teaching procedures or classroom format” (p. 383). Thus opportunities to
78 Brian Doig & Susie Groves

experiment with classroom practice and analyse it in detail—an important
feature of Japanese Lesson Study—is likely to be a fruitful path to take in teacher
professional development.
Moreover, Hattie (2009), when looking for the characteristics of teachers
who students claimed were the best, quotes Pehkonen (1992) as saying that these
characteristics include “teachers who helped students to have different and
better strategies or processes to learn the subject” (p. 108), thus indicating that
professional development that provides teachers with these skills would be of
benefit to students. As discussed later in this paper, Japanese Lesson Study in
mathematics is based around a structured problem-solving research lesson, in
which a major part of the lesson consists of students sharing, polishing and
refining their solution strategies.
Loucks-Horsley, Stiles, and Hewson (1996), describing the results of the
Professional Development Project of the National Institute for Science Education,
which looked at the mathematics, science, and professional development
communities’ understandings of what was effective professional learning, found
a large amount of consensus. For example, it was agreed, inter alia, that good
professional development programs:
• are driven by a clear, well-defined image of effective classroom learning
and teaching;
• provide teachers with opportunities to develop knowledge and skills
and broaden their teaching approaches, so they can create better
learning opportunities for students; and
• build or strengthen the learning community of science and mathematics
teachers.
In this paper, we argue that Japanese Lesson Study demonstrates these features.
Japanese Lesson Study
Even more basic is the whole idea of instruction as something that can and
should be improved through consultation with colleagues, trial in the classroom
and critique. (Lewis, 2000, pp. 32–33)
To the casual observer, Japanese Lesson Study may seem like a simple idea.
Teachers with a common focus meet and plan lessons together. These lessons
may have a focus on building skills or understanding, and are known as
“research lessons”, which are taught by one, and observed by not only all of the
teachers who are doing the planning, but also by observers who, at one end of
the spectrum, may come only from the teachers’ own school, or, at the other end,
may come from all over Japan (see, for example, Lewis & Tsuchida, 1998). A
debriefing session follows the lesson, where the lesson is discussed at some
length, with modifications often suggested by the observers, who frequently
include an invited academic or “veteran teacher”.
Lewis (2002) describes the Lesson Study Cycle as having four phases:
• goal-setting and planning – including the development of the Lesson Plan;
• teaching the research lesson – enabling the lesson observation;
Japanese Lesson Study: Teacher Professional Development through Communities of Inquiry 79

• the post-lesson discussion; and
• the resulting consolidation of learning, which has many far-reaching
consequences (see Lewis & Tsuchida, 1998, for teachers’ comments on
the impact of research lessons on their understandings about science
teaching).
While these points are stated simply, a great deal of unpacking of each is needed
to fully understand the concepts and processes of Japanese Lesson Study in
practice.
Goal Setting and Planning
Goal setting and planning are the critical underpinning of Japanese Lesson Study
– we use the metaphor of an iceberg to represent the extent of the “underwater”
support needed for planning the lesson.
Establishing long-term goals
Long-term goals in Japanese Lesson Study may be about behaviour, attitude or
learning. For example, Takahashi and Yoshida (2004) give the example of a
Lesson Study group in the United States wishing “to investigate how to improve
the teaching and learning of measurement” (p. 439), while T. Fujii (personal
communication, August 26, 2010) gave the example of a school whose long-term
goal was to improve children’s curiosity.
Research themes should address the “biggest gap” between the qualities
students have and ideals espoused by their teachers. Selecting such a theme or
goal is seen to be at the heart of successful Lesson Study and can lead to a
research focus that can be maintained over several years (Lewis, 2000). This
aspect of Lesson Study is often overlooked when it is adopted in other countries.
Planning the research lesson
In Japan, Lesson Study takes place across all curriculum areas, as well as in non-
curriculum areas such as class meetings, although it is probably more common
in mathematics and science than some other areas.
In mathematics, the research lesson, at least at the primary school level,
usually follows the typical lesson pattern for a Japanese structured problem-solving
lesson. According to Stigler and Hiebert (1999), such lessons can be described as
having the following stages:
• Reviewing the previous lesson
• Presenting the problems for the day
• Students working individually or in groups
• Discussing solution methods
• Highlighting and summarizing the main point (pp. 79-80).
According to Takahashi (2006), a “Japanese mathematics lesson is designed
around solving a single problem to achieve a single objective in a topic” (p. 4).
This single thought-provoking question or problem with which the students
80 Brian Doig & Susie Groves

engage is referred to as the hatsumon. As we have argued elsewhere, the role of
this single task is critical to the lesson success (Doig, Groves, & Fujii, 2011). Thus,
to select an appropriate task, there needs to be a great deal of research into the
mathematics involved – for example, the position of the mathematical content of
the lesson within the overall curriculum – as well as the students’ expected
responses to the task, in order to find the best materials to assist students’
learning.
This extensive research process is termed kyozaikenkyu. It involves the
investigation of a large range of instructional materials, including textbooks,
curriculum materials, lesson plans and reports from other lesson studies, as well
as a study of students’ prior understandings, which makes it possible for
teachers to anticipate students' reactions and solutions to the problems during
the lessons. While the literal meaning of kyozaikenkyu is the study or investigation
(kenkyu) of instructional materials (kyozai), the word kyozai means much more
than textbooks or curriculum materials and needs to involve learning goals.
Thus, according to Watanabe, Takahashi and Yoshida (2008), “kyozaikenkyu, is the
process to help teachers gain a deeper understanding of kyozai” (p. 135).
Moreover, it is important to distinguish between the content to be learned in a
lesson and the tasks, as it is possible to explore the same subject matter with
different kyozai, or investigate different subject matter with the same kyozai (p.
133).
The extent of the research and the detail that goes into the preparation of the
lesson plans for research lessons are illustrated in Figure 1, (following page)
where different sections of the typically five or six page lesson plans are
identified. While all teachers need to engage in kyozaikenkyu as part of their
lesson planning, Lesson Study requires teachers to engage in it in much more
depth.
In a similar sense, Ma (1999) speaks of Chinese teachers’ “profound
understanding of fundamental mathematics” and how this is developed through
“studying teaching materials intensively” (p. 130). In contrast, when we
conducted an abbreviated Lesson Study cycle, in a three-day workshop at an
international conference (Doig, Groves, & Machácková, 2009), it became
apparent that many participants had little in-depth knowledge relating to the
content of the lesson (fractions) or experience in studying teaching materials in
depth. There were clear differences among participants, apparently based on
country of origin. This experience, with an international group of mathematics
educators, highlights the lack of opportunity for and disposition towards
detailed study of mathematical content in many countries, including Australia.
Teaching and observing the research lesson
Teaching the research lesson forms the core of Japanese Lesson Study, providing
both the opportunity to test the lesson plan in the classroom and an opportunity
for observation and reflection.
Japanese Lesson Study: Teacher Professional Development through Communities of Inquiry 81

Teaching the research lesson
After being presented with the hatsumon or problem, students work individually
or in groups on the problem while the teacher engages in kikan-shido – sometimes
referred to as “between desks walking”, but perhaps more accurately as
“purposeful scanning”. The teacher of the research lesson takes careful notes of
which students are using which strategy to solve the lesson problem (see Figure
2) and knows, from the Lesson Study group’s research, expected solution
strategies. The teacher’s notes allow the teacher not only to monitor students’
strategies but also to orchestrate their reports on their solutions in the crucial
whole class discussion that follows the students’ working time – the neriage phase
of the lesson, which often occupies the majority of time in a research lesson.
As Takahashi (2006) puts it, “Because the goal of the structured problem-
solving approach is to develop students’ understanding of mathematical concepts
and skills, a teacher is expected to facilitate mathematical discussion for students
to achieve this goal” (p. 6). The term neriage, used for this discussion part of the
lesson, indicates a kneading of student ideas, allowing them to compare, polish
and refine these solutions through the teacher’s orchestration and probing.
82 Brian Doig & Susie Groves
Figure 1. Sections of a lesson plan for a Research Lesson (Fujii, 2008)

Because of the extensive koyzaikenkyu, the teacher has an understanding of likely
student responses and strategies to the lesson task, including more efficient
strategies, as well as common student misunderstandings. Detailed observation
of actual student responses while students work allows the teacher to carefully
orchestrate the order of solutions to be shared.
The discussion of solutions is followed by the matome – the summing up and
careful review of the discussion aimed at guiding students to higher levels of
mathematical sophistication (Shimizu, 1999). In the conclusion to the lesson,
students – even very young children – are often asked to reflect in writing on
what they have learned during the lesson.
A surprising aspect of Japanese classrooms is the lack of modern equipment,
such as over-head projectors, computers, and electronic white-boards. While
schools in countries such as Australia are adopting the use of these technological
products at a great rate, the countries that manufacture them, China and Japan,
appear to eschew them. In Japan, the blackboard is used extensively in lessons:
• To keep a record of the lesson;
• To help students remember what they need to do and to think about;
• To help students see the connection between different parts of the lesson
and the progression of the lesson;
• To compare, contrast, and discuss ideas that students present;
• To help to organize student thinking and discovery of new ideas; and
• To foster organized student note-taking skills by modelling good
organization (Takahashi, 2006, pp. 6–7).
The importance of the blackboard is shown by the fact that a special term, bansho,
is used to denote its use. At the end of a research lesson, Japanese observers frequent-
ly take photographs of the blackboard, as it reveals to students and teachers alike
the progress of the lesson, and the students’ responses. This helps to organise student
Japanese Lesson Study: Teacher Professional Development through Communities of Inquiry 83
Figure 2. A teacher using a seating plan to record his Year 3 students’ solutions

thinking and model good organisation of notes. Figure 3 shows one of the
author’s photographs of a blackboard at the end of a Grade 3 lesson on division.
Observing the research lesson
The teaching phase of a research lesson is conducted with many observers in
attendance. These observers may include only teachers from the same school,
teachers from other local schools, or teachers and academics from an extended
range of schools, with some research lessons being open to teachers from all over
Japan. While “in-school” Lesson Study is the most common, national schools and
attached schools of universities often hold Lesson Study days across the
curriculum, as do professional associations in their own curriculum areas. One
Lesson Study “day” observed by one of the authors saw approximately 2000
people converge on a single Tokyo elementary school on a Saturday to observe a
series of mathematics lessons. Observers, often with video cameras, crowded
into the classrooms, leant in through windows along a verandah, and peered in
through the doors. We have also observed Lesson Study as part of mathematics
education conferences both in Japan and in Mexico at the eleventh International
Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME 11).
Regardless of the type of Lesson Study, all observers are provided with a
copy of the detailed lesson plan, and take comprehensive notes of the lesson,
often as well as video and photographic records (see Figure 4). The main focus of
the observations is student thinking and learning, with observers, like the
teacher, making detailed notes of students’ solution strategies. Sometimes
observers choose to focus on just one or two students for the entire lesson.
Observers do not interact with nor “help” the students or the teacher during the
lesson, as the purpose is to observe the implementation of the lesson as planned.
84 Brian Doig & Susie Groves
Figure 3. Photograph of the blackboard at the end of a Year 3 lesson on division

The post-lesson discussion
Finally, after the children have completed the lesson, the research lesson is
discussed by the teacher and all of the observers. The focus of the discussion is
not personal, but is about the research lesson itself, and in particular about the
learning that has taken place and the ways in which the lesson might be
improved.
Typically, the discussion is chaired by the principal or some other member
of the school, with an “outsider”, often an academic from the local university,
being invited to comment at the end of the discussion. The teacher is given the
first opportunity to speak, to explain their intentions for the lesson, as well as
their impressions of what was successful and what was less successful in the
lesson. Other members of the planning team then explain the rationale behind
the lesson and how the lesson furthers the research theme. After this, there are
comments from other observers, based on their detailed notes of the lesson, and
the invited commentator who pulls the discussion together and draws out
implications relating to the particular lesson and learning and teaching more
generally. These discussions often last up to two hours, and are, at the local level
anyway, often followed by a convivial meal at a local restaurant. We have
attended post-lesson discussions of forty observers, each with comments about
the lesson, how it might be improved, or what its highlights were (see Figure 5).
Japanese Lesson Study: Teacher Professional Development through Communities of Inquiry 85
Figure 4. Observers taking detailed notes in a local school research lesson

Japanese Lesson Study as Professional Development
Lesson Study makes various types of knowledge more visible, such as
colleagues’ ideas about pedagogy and students’ mathematical thinking, thereby
enabling teachers to encounter new or different ideas, and to refine their
knowledge. (Lewis, Perry, & Hurd, 2009, p. 286)
Research lessons are not about perfecting one lesson, but rather focus on
developing teachers’ ideas and experiences of different approaches to teaching.
Research lessons make participants and observers think quite profoundly about
specific and general aspects of teaching.
Lewis and Tsuchida (1998) and Lewis (2000) identify a number of ways in
which Lesson Study contributes to the improvement of Japanese education. One
teacher interviewed described the impact of Lesson Study this way:
Research lessons help you see your teaching from various points of view …. A
lesson is like a swiftly flowing river; when you’re teaching you must make
judgments instantly. When you do a research lesson, your colleagues write down
your words and the students’ words. Your real profile as a teacher is revealed to
you for the first time. (Teacher cited in Lewis & Tsuchida, 1998, p. 15)
Other teachers spoke of Lesson Study offering them the opportunity to “learn to
see children” (Lewis, 2000, p. 14) through the systematic data gathering
facilitated by the lesson plans suggesting what to look for in the research lesson
and all participants pooling their data.
Lesson Study was also seen by Lewis and Tsuchida (1998) as an important
way to spread ideas about new content and approaches – especially at times
when there were changes in the national curriculum, with teachers not only
having the opportunity to watch new content being taught but also being able to
86 Brian Doig & Susie Groves
Figure 5. The post-lesson discussion at a local school

discuss the reasons behind changes. Other ways in which they saw Lesson Study
having an impact was through: connecting classroom practice to broader school
and community goals; creating demand for improvement of practice through
viewing best practice and comparing it with their own; shaping national policy;
and honouring the role of classroom teachers. But perhaps the most interesting
observation is that Lesson Study provides the opportunity for teachers to explore
conflicting ideas, by giving “teachers a chance to bring up, discuss, and perhaps
reconcile competing goals or visions of education (p. 16).
Communities of Inquiry
In Japan, Lesson Study is a model for a community of practitioner-teachers to
follow as they study student thinking for the purpose of improving
instructional practices in their own classrooms. (Yarema, 2010, p. 5)
In a review of past thinking and future prospects for mathematics teacher
professional development, Zaslavsky, Chapman, and Lieken (2001) argue that
past professional development programs mirrored the teaching of mathematics:
that is to say, “transmitting information, providing ideas and providing training
in skills and techniques” (p. 878). They go on to say that this has been supplanted,
more recently, in many cases, with programs that require teachers to play an
active role in their own professional development. As a consequence, professional
development programs adopt a constructivist perspective that “teacher’s
knowledge [is] developing socially within communities of practice” (p. 878). For
example, in examining an action research-based professional development
program, the following characteristics were noted: collaborative planning of
group activities and individual lessons; lessons taught by the program leader
and observed by the participants, and vice versa; co-teaching by the leader and
participants; and post-lesson de-briefing by everyone in the program.
Many, but not all, of these characteristics are also to be found in Japanese
Lesson Study practice. These include collaborative lesson planning, lesson
observation, and post-lesson de-briefing. Further, Stein, Smith, Henningsen, and
Silver (2000) hold the view that once teachers see their own students’ task
responses as examples in a more general pattern, they could then reflect on their
own practice from a cognitive demand perspective, the perspective that Japanese
Lesson Study employs, as one of its enabling aspects, lesson task selection and
implementation. Zaslavsky et al. (2001) also note that lesson tasks have a dual
role: they are both lesson content that drives student learning and are also the
basis for indirect learning by the teacher.
Lewis et al. (2009) propose a theoretical model for the way in which Lesson
Study produces instructional improvement. The model proposes that not only
does Lesson Study make various types of knowledge more visible (see earlier
quote), and improve resources available to teachers, but that “lesson study
enables teachers to strengthen professional community, and to build the norms”.
They add that, “these might include norms of inquiry and accountability and
shared language and frameworks for analysis of practice” (p. 286).
Japanese Lesson Study: Teacher Professional Development through Communities of Inquiry 87

These norms and practices resonate with Splitter’s (2009) definition of a
community of inquiry as:
a particular kind of … environment or culture, in which students engage
together in various forms of inquiry, where the latter is understood to be any
mode of thinking that is motivated by, and directed toward, clarifying, solving
or resolving something which is regarded as both problematic and worthy of
attention. (p. 171)
Moreover, Perry and Lewis (2009), in a description of what they call an “existence
proof” that Lesson Study can be successfully adapted in the USA, regard the
development of a professional community as one of the key conditions for
supporting successful Lesson Study.
Adapting Japanese Lesson Study
The graveyards of U.S. educational reform are littered with once-promising
innovations that were poorly understood, superficially implemented, and
consequently pronounced ineffective. (Lewis, 2000, p. 33)
As Stigler and Hiebert (1999) point out, our efforts at improving teaching often
ignore the fact that teaching is a cultural activity. The phenomenal growth of
Lesson Study as a vehicle for professional development, primarily in the USA,
but also elsewhere, has highlighted some of the cultural assumptions underlying
Japanese Lesson Study and raised questions about the extent to which it can be
replicated elsewhere.
Japan has a century-old history of Lesson Study. Unlike Australia, where
teaching is seen very much as a private activity, teaching in Japan is seen as a
public activity, with teachers’ classroom performances open to collegial scrutiny
and comment. The relatively high status afforded to teaching in Japan results in
a stable teaching population, with teaching being seen as a life-long profession.
Lesson Study requires a long-term commitment, which is also difficult when, as
in Australia, models of teacher professional development are constantly
changing.
Another cultural factor that distinguishes Japan and Australia is the focus on
the classroom as a community of learners as opposed to a focus on individual
differences. Community is built in elementary school classrooms through a range
of strategies, including the thoughtful, deliberate creation and maintenance of
ongoing small groups that form the underlying structure for lessons as well as
for out of class activities such as eating lunch, playing games, and cleaning the
school. This sense of community is in evidence in the ways in which students
engage in the structured problem-solving lessons that form the basis for Lesson
Study in mathematics.
The school context is also a powerful influence. In Japan, while the
preparation for Lesson Study takes place outside school hours, the long-standing
tradition of Lesson Study allows flexible arrangements to be made for
conducting the observed lessons and the post-lesson debriefing discussions. In
88 Brian Doig & Susie Groves

Australia, a major constraint to such activity is the fact that most schools would
need to employ casual teachers to take the place of teachers observing lessons in
other classes or schools. For a more detailed discussion of some of these factors,
see Groves and Doig (2010).
Lewis and Tsuchida (1998, pp. 50–51) identify what they regard as four
major conditions that support Japanese Lesson Study: a shared frugal
curriculum; collaboration among teachers; critical self-reflection – hansei – which
is highly valued within the wider Japanese culture; and stability in educational
policy.
While many of the factors identified above that impose constraints on the
adoption of Japanese Lesson Study relate to the process, others, which may in
fact constitute greater barriers, relate to the nature of the Japanese structured
problem-solving lesson. In contrast to the crowded Australian curriculum, the
“frugal” Japanese mathematics curriculum affords both opportunities for, and
dispositions towards, a detailed study of mathematical content. It provides time
for a longer-term, deeper study of a more limited number of mathematical topics,
which leads to more understanding of concepts, greater skill development, and
overall better achievement by all students in the class.
Moreover, as Perry and Lewis (2009) point out, Lesson Study assumes that:
teachers would begin to understand student thinking primarily through
observing students during lessons. However, not all lessons include ‘‘thought-
revealing tasks’’ … that enable observers to study student thinking; Japanese
mathematics lessons elicit student thinking more reliably than do US
mathematics lessons. (pp. 376–377)
Nevertheless, Perry and Lewis (2009), in their “existence proof” case of a USA
school district with a four-year successful history of Lesson Study, found
significant changes that resulted in the “evolution of a more balanced, coherent
model of lesson study that emphasized practitioner learning as well as lesson
planning” (p. 372). Among these was teachers’ increased use of reflection, which
enabled them to “capture their own learning” (p. 374).
Another important support for change was the use of outside experts, with
an example being given of one Japanese expert pressing teachers to include
students’ anticipated solutions in their lesson plans, to consider how many such
solutions were likely, to think about how they would treat incorrect solutions
(Perry & Lewis, 2009). Our own experience at the international conference
referred to earlier (Doig et al., 2009) showed that participants were themselves
only able to find a couple of possible solutions and were sceptical that the grade
3 students would be able to come up with different solutions to the problem of
dividing three pizzas equally between four people. The five children who
participated the following day in fact found 16 mostly different solutions.
This example also relates to the fourth major factor identified by Perry and
Lewis (2009) as contributing to the shift in participants’ view of Lesson Study –
an increased focus on mathematical thinking, with a corresponding change in
emphasis from superficial aspects to collecting detailed data on which to base
Japanese Lesson Study: Teacher Professional Development through Communities of Inquiry 89

substantive conversations about pedagogy and content. One teacher was
reported as saying:
A couple of the Japanese men had documented minute by minute what
[students] were doing … It made me realize as an observer how you can just get
warm feelings about some things, but it’s really important to be detailed in your
observation and really be critically thinking. (p. 377)
In Mainland China, Teaching Research Groups have existed in all schools for
over half a century (Yang, 2009). These groups, which are mandated by the
government, conduct a number of different activities, some of which closely
resemble (or are even sometimes seen as being identical to) Japanese Lesson
Study. Typically, research lessons are taught at least twice – in fact when the
authors were in China recently they saw one lesson dramatically changed as the
result of the post-lesson discussion and re-taught within the space of a couple of
hours.
While one possible outcome from Japanese Lesson Study is a polished, and
perhaps even published, lesson on a particular topic, it is a mistake to assume
that this is the main goal or, as it is common in the USA, that the same lesson is
even taught again as part of the Lesson Study (Lewis et al., 2009). As Lewis (2000,
p. 5) points out, “The research lesson is not a finished product that is expected to
be used in toto elsewhere, but an example of a goal or vision of education in
action”.
In a similar vein, Perry and Lewis (2009) conclude that in their USA case
“Lesson study evolved from an activity focused on creation of polished lessons
to a comprehensive system for teacher learning from practice and external
knowledge sources” (p. 383), and this might present a clue as to how Lesson
Study can be adapted to better suit the Australian context.
Sustaining Professional Development
Of all aspects of professional development, sustaining change is perhaps the
most neglected. It is clear that, to be successful, professional development must
be seen as a process, not an event (Guskey, 2002, p. 388)
There are a number of reasons why Lesson Study offers the potential for
sustained professional development. First, it offers teachers the opportunity to
develop professional communities of inquiry, with ownership of the
improvement effort, a commitment to inquiry, shared goals, and a sense of
responsibility to their colleagues and students (Lewis et al., 2009).
Secondly, while progress is often slow at the start, the process can evolve
over time with teachers beginning by weaving “some of the simpler components
of lesson study (such as collaborative lesson planning) in with their existing
practices, and only later … [grasping] the significance of other ideas such as
developing a lesson rationale and documenting their own learning” (Perry &
Lewis, 2009, p. 388).
90 Brian Doig & Susie Groves

Thirdly, Lesson Study enables teachers to build on their efforts and refine
their understandings. In the case reported by Lewis et al. (2009), teachers on their
own initiative decided to continue to meet to further revise their lesson to allow
colleagues to observe the research lesson and collect data. This is not an
uncommon occurrence in Lesson Study.
Lastly, as Perry and Lewis (2009) comment:
Lesson study may stand a better chance of survival than specific instructional
reforms because it is a means for bringing practice into line with goals that can
be used flexibly to support various reform ideas. (p. 387)
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Authors
Brian Doig, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.
Email: <brian.doig@deakin.edu.au>
Susie Groves, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.
Email: <susie.groves@deakin.edu.au>
Japanese Lesson Study: Teacher Professional Development through Communities of Inquiry 93