Collaborative Lesson Study

Discover how Lesson Study benefits both students and teachers. Unlike scripted curricula that strip teachers of professional decisionmaking, Lesson Study values teachers by expecting them to be agents of improvement in their own classrooms. This resource empowers readers to oppose reform efforts that minimize teacher agency by offering an evidence-based approach to teacher-led instructional improvement. The text provides structures for attending to students’ interests, knowledge, and values when planning, teaching, reflecting, and revising instruction. It also shows educators how to use Lesson Study to design culturally responsive, differentiated instruction for the K–12 classroom. Use this step-by-step guide to develop professional learning communities; increase teacher motivation, efficacy, and knowledge; and support improvement adapted to local contexts. Book Features: Guides readers through three cycles of Lesson Study, taking teacher learning deeper with each cycle. Focuses on developing student understanding that supports meaningful instruction across academic areas. Emphasizes the utility of Lesson Study for informing culturally responsive instruction. Offers examples from a variety of grade-levels and content areas, featuring both pre- and inservice teachers. Includes additional resources and prompts in each chapter to guide application.

Discover how Lesson Study benefits both students and teachers. Unlike scripted curricula that strip teachers of professional decision-making, Lesson Study values teachers by expecting them to be agents of improvement in their own classrooms. This resource empowers readers to oppose reform efforts that minimize teacher agency by offering an evidence-based approach to teacher-led instructional improvement. The text provides structures for attending to students’ interests, knowledge, and values when planning, teaching, reflecting, and revising instruction. It also shows educators how to use Lesson Study to design culturally responsive, differentiated instruction for the K–12 classroom. Use this step-by-step guide to develop professional learning communities; increase teacher motivation, efficacy, and knowledge; and support improvement adapted to local contexts. Book Features: Guides readers through three cycles of Lesson Study, taking teacher learning deeper with each cycle.Focuses on developing student understanding that supports meaningful instruction across academic areas.Emphasizes the utility of Lesson Study for informing culturally responsive instruction.Includes examples from a variety of grade-levels and content areas, featuring both pre- and inservice teachers.Includes additional resources and prompts in each chapter to guide application.

"At a time when so many educational policies fail to recognize and nurture the capacity of teachers to improve instruction, we feel enormously grateful for the learning community lesson study has brought to us." -Catherine Lewis and Jacqueline Hurd It's a simple idea: if we want to improve instruction, what could be more obvious than collaborating with fellow teachers to plan instruction and examine its impact on students? Lesson Study empowers teachers to improve instruction. Unlike one-size-fits-all professional development, Lesson Study allows teachers to bring their own pressing needs to the table. They seek out answers from one another, from outside specialists and research, and from careful study of students during lessons that incorporate teachers' collective knowledge. The result is a shared vision of good instruction. Lesson Study Step-By-Step shows new groups of teachers how to begin this journey, and experienced teams how to to deepen their work. It provides guidance through each step of the Lesson Study process, from building a group and homing in on a topic to conducting and reflecting on a research lesson. Strategies and materials are provided to support you each step of the way, including: a schedule for the overall process sample meeting agendas protocols for observation and discussion of lessons templates for development of the research theme and teaching-learning plan suggested processes for norm-setting and effective group management. Additional online resources allow you to explore video of teachers engaged in a mathematics lesson study cycle. At a time when so many school districts are already suffering from reform overload, why is Lesson Study so important? Because it supplies a key missing element in reform: a means to improving teaching and learning through a shared professional knowledge base. Lesson Study, Step-by-Step shows us how to make our schools places where we will all continue to learn.

"Provides readers with a compelling rationale for the process, offers experience-tested tools, and suggests ways to address commonly-occurring challenges. This book will assist teachers, and those who support them, in understanding and implementing all phases of lesson study, from initial planning through sharing with others what was learned." —Dennis Sparks, Executive Director National Staff Development Council "A powerful teacher professional development process that focuses collaborative teams directly on the classroom, and the perfect tool for teachers, professional developers, and team leaders. Gives you everything you need to use lesson study to support teachers in thinking deeply about practice." —Roberta Jaffe, Science Education Coordinator, New Teacher Center, University of California, Santa Cruz Use this team-centered approach to directly enhance teaching and learning in your school! First introduced in Japan, lesson study has gained enthusiastic advocates in US educational circles as a powerful, collaborative approach that brings teachers together as researchers into the science and craft of teaching and learning in their classrooms. Teachers work as teams to develop a lesson plan, teach and observe the lesson to collect data on student learning, and use their observations to refine their lesson. Participants build their sense of professional authority while discovering effective practices that result in improved learning outcomes for their students. This "how-to" guide provides teachers, administrators, and team leaders with practical strategies, models, and tools. The book leads a beginning team through the phases of the lesson study cycle and provides an experienced team with new perspectives. Using examples from U.S. classrooms, this handbook: Encourages educators to generate and share knowledge Inspires a teacher-researcher stance Illustrates both the process and substance of lesson study Encourages collaboration Provides guidelines for avoiding common pitfalls Leading Lesson Study is an excellent resource for both experienced and novice lesson study teams, administrators who want to start a lesson study program, and lesson study team facilitators such as instructional coaches and professional development providers.

Ensure Conversations About Collaboration Get Results. This book lays out the theory and practice of Collaborative Professionalism. Through five international case studies, the authors distinguish Collaborative Professionalism from professional collaboration by highlighting intentional collaborative designs and providing concrete examples for how to be more purposeful with collaboration. Additionally, the book makes Collaborative Professionalism accessible to all educators through clear take-aways including: Ten core tenets, including Collective Efficacy, Collaborative Inquiry, and Collaborating With Students. Graphics indicating how educators can move from mere professional collaboration to the deep and transformative work of Collaborative Professionalism. Analysis of which collaborative practices educators should start doing, keep doing, and stop doing Collaboration can be one of your most powerful educational tools when used correctly, and turned into action. This book shows you how.

Collaborative learning is well-recognised as a pedagogical practice that promotes socialisation and learning among students from kindergarten to the university level and beyond. Children, adolescents, and adults learn from each other in a vast array of formal and informal settings in schools and the wider community. This book brings together a diverse range of international scholars to profile new pedagogical developments in collaborative learning and to highlight how these practices have been implemented. The term collaborative learning is used very broadly in this volume and includes co-operative learning, peer learning, and peer collaboration. The proponents of these practices argue that by working together, students have many opportunities to learn and develop a greater understanding of others with diverse social, personal, and academic competencies. The emphasis in this volume is on chapters that have a strong evidence-base for the work that is presented. This includes chapters that present empirical studies, research reviews, case studies and theoretical reviews because there is much to be gained by sharing and learning about what happens and how different pedagogical practices have been implemented. These chapters include pedagogical practices in mathematics learning, classroom-based talk, literacy, learning processes, group work, pre-service teacher education, teacher professional development, web-based technologies, and affective education and development. This book will have appeal to pre-service and experienced teachers who are interested in how different collaborative pedagogies can be embedded in different curricula to promote student engagement with learning. It will also be valuable as a reference text in post-graduate courses that focus on research training in education.

Lesson Study in Initial Teacher Education highlights the importance of embedding lesson study within initial teacher education programmes, including building partnerships, making time to carry out collaborative inquiries using lesson study, and frameworks for reporting on lesson study projects.

Lesson study is a popular professional development approach in Japan whereby teachers collaborate to study content, instruction, and how students solve problems and reach for understanding in order to improve elementary mathematics instruction and learning in the classroom. This book is the first comprehensive look at the system and process of lesson study in Japan. It describes in detail the process of how teachers conducted lesson study--how they collaborated in order to develop a lesson, what they talked about during the process, and what they looked at in order to understand deeply how students were learning. Readers see the planning of a mathematics lesson, as well as how much content knowledge the teachers have. They observe students' problem solving strategies and learn how Japanese teachers prepare themselves to identify those strategies and facilitate the students' discussion. Written for mathematics teachers, educational researchers, school administrators interested in teachers' professional development, and professional developers, this landmark volume provides an in-depth understanding of lesson study that can lead to positive changes in teachers' professional development and in teaching and learning in the United States.