Using Japanese Lesson Study to Merge Inservice Professional Development and Preservice Clinical Experiences

• Published in: The Clearing house 2020-03, Vol.93 (2), p.93-99
• Main Authors: Groth, Randall E., Bergner, Jennifer A., Weaver, Starlin D., Welsh, Gail S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Collaboration; College Faculty; College School Cooperation; Communities of Practice; Faculty Development; Japanese language; Japanese lesson study; Mathematics Teachers; Mentors; pre-service teachers; Preservice Teacher Education; Preservice Teachers; professional development; Reflection; Science Teachers; Secondary School Teachers; Teacher Collaboration; Teacher education; Teacher Improvement
• ISSN: 0009-8655; 1939-912X
• DOI: 10.1080/00098655.2020.1729082

For many years, lesson study has been woven into the professional lives of Japanese teachers. Recently, it has become more widespread in the U.S. Core elements of Japanese Lesson Study include collaborative lesson design, empirical trials of lessons, collective analysis of empirical trials, and subsequent lesson re-design. We describe how these core elements were implemented in a teacher education project that brought together prospective and practicing secondary-level science and mathematics teachers in interdisciplinary groups facilitated by university faculty members. The four groups described in this report designed and analyzed lessons about attending to scale factor in the context of microscopic images, constructing a geologic timeline, examining states of matter, and building a scale model of the solar system. The Japanese Lesson Study process helped these groups reflect on the nature of the content being taught, pedagogical concerns, and content-specific pedagogy. We found that discursive moves such as connecting separate strands of conversation and identifying mistakes helped facilitate group reflection. A growing body of research suggests that Japanese Lesson Study can be implemented in a wide array of contexts; we encourage others to include it among clinical experiences for prospective teachers because of its potential to give more undergraduates access to the most skilled mentor teachers and to counteract feelings of professional isolation that cause many to leave teaching. We offer our own experiences facilitating lesson study and dealing with challenges along the way to help others start to implement the model in their own professional settings.