Content provided in partnership with
Incorporating 'Lesson Study' in Teacher Preparation
Educational Forum, The, Fall 2006 by Cohan, Audrey, Honigsfeld, Andrea
Abstract
This paper describes two teacher educators' practice of incorporating jugyoun kenkyuu-the Japanese lesson study approach-in teacher preparation programs. To ascertain the effectiveness of using this approach in undergraduate and graduate education programs, the authors conducted a research study among 17 undergraduate students and 51 graduate students. The results of this study showed that the lesson study approach is an effective tool for lesson planning, lesson presentation, and evaluation in both undergraduate and graduate contexts.
In most methodology courses in teacher education, one of the cornerstone activities in the preparation of teacher candidates is to develop lesson and unit plans that:
- Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »
* reflect national, state, and local learning standards;
* build on clearly stated objectives;
* indicate carefully designed developmental procedures;
* include differentiated instruction and adaptations to meet the needs of all learners;
* provide student learners with opportunities to practice and apply new knowledge and skills taught in the lesson; and
* connect the objectives to appropriate assessment procedures.
The challenge teacher educators face is providing candidates with ample opportunities to create lesson and unit plans and to practice implementing those lesson ideas in a supportive college classroom environment. In response to this challenge, the authors introduced an adaptation of jugyoun kenkyuu-the Japanese lesson study approach-to their undergraduate and graduate teacher candidates. The authors were interested in knowing whether or not this approach was applicable to the realm of teacher education and its impact on teacher candidates. The study was designed to answer the following questions:
* How effective is the lesson study approach in teacher education courses?
* What are the benefits of using the lesson study approach in teacher education courses?
* What are the differences in using the lesson study approach in undergraduate versus graduate courses?
Theoretical Framework
Lesson study began in Japan as a professional development activity. Experienced in-service teachers regularly engaged in this process to examine their teaching practices and to improve their effectiveness. Participating teachers jointly planned a lesson in response to a preestablished study question or goal. One teacher then taught the lesson while others observed. Afterward, teachers discussed the lesson, revised it, and another member taught the lesson in a new class. This process of observation and discussion was repeated several times, culminating with a written report (Fernandez and Chokshi 2002). The origins of the Japanese lesson study, jugyoun kenkyuu, which is sometimes translated as research lesson (Lewis 2002), can be traced back to the early 1900s (Fernandez 2002).
The first publications that discussed this approach and its potential application in in-service professional development in the United States appeared in the late 1990s (Lewis and Tsuchida 1998; Stigler and Hiebert 1999). Yoshida (2004, 5) emphasized "Lesson study helps to make teachers into lifelong learners. It is especially important to think of lesson study as a professional development activity, not as teacher training and lesson development. It creates opportunities for teachers to think deeply about instruction, learning, curriculum, and education." In recent years, lesson study has become more prominent in the literature (Boss 2001; Kelly 2002; Watanabe 2002; Chokshi and Fernandez 2004; Staples 2005; Stewart and Brendefur 2005) and several lesson study centers have been established around the country (e.g., Columbia University, Mills College, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Metropolitan Nashville School District).
Most publications on lesson study identify the challenges of adapting the approach to the U.S. school culture and offer recommendations on ways to best make the transition (e. g., Lewis 2002; Fernandez, Cannon, and Chokshi 2003; Chokshi and Fernandez 2004). Limited publications exist on how to use the lesson study approach in preservice education, though the possibility has been identified for preservice teacher education and has been the topic of several doctoral dissertations (Finken et al. 2004).
Lesson Study Implementation: Two Scenarios
Undergraduate implementation. In the introductory phase, preservice elementary education teacher candidates were introduced to the lesson study approach in a science methodology course where the emphasis was on implementation and evaluation.
After a brief overview of the approach, the undergraduate students received a multiphased task, in Phase One, the entire group of teacher candidates (n=17) collectively decided on four focus topics given the grade level and content of the lesson: the implementation of the discovery model; effectiveness of higher-order thinking; feedback on the candidates' dispositions; and the extent to which science was integrated with other disciplines in the lesson planning.
Find Research Guides for:
Find Featured Titles for: Technology
Most Popular Articles in Reference
- The importance of understanding organizational culture
- Credit card attitudes and behaviors of college students
- What factors attract foreign direct investment?
- Libraries Need Relationship Marketing - mutual interest marketing concept, ...
- How to set performance goals: employee reviews are more than annual critiques
- More »