1. Catherine Lewis Mills College, Oakland, CA www.Lessonresearch.net
Lesson Study
Catherine Lewis
Mills College, Oakland, CA
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

2. Choosing a Lesson Study Theme
Think about the students you serve.
Your Ideals:
What qualities would you like these students to have 5-10 years from now?

3. Choosing a Lesson Study Theme
Think about the students you serve.
The Actual:
List their qualities now.

4. Choosing a Lesson Study Theme
What is a gap between the ideal and the actual that you would really like to work on as an educator?

5. Choosing a Lesson Study Theme
Think about the students you serve.
Your Ideals:
What qualities would you like these students to have 5-10 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:

6. Lesson Study 1. STUDY 2. PLAN 4. REFLECT 3. RESEARCH LESSON
Consider long term goals for student learning and development
Study curriculum and standards
2. PLAN
Select or revise research lesson
Do student task
Anticipate student responses
Plan data collection and lesson
4. REFLECT
Share data
What was learned about student learning, the lesson design, instruction?
What are implications for improvement of this lesson and instruction more broadly?
Lesson study is the way that Japanese teachers improve instruction. It has been practiced for many decades in Japan, and has take n off in about 250 sites across the US in the past 5 years.
See examples rather than tell you about it. Graphics, so will have
3. RESEARCH LESSON
Conduct research lesson
Collect data

7. What is a Research Lesson?
Actual classroom lesson with students, watched by other teachers
Planned for a long time, collaboratively
Brings to life a goal or vision of education
Recorded: video, audio, student work
Discussed by faculty and sometimes outside commentators

8. Types of Research Lessons
In - School
Public
Embedded in conferences, study groups, district-wide professional development, etc.

9. Can patterns help us find an easy way to answer the question:
How many seats fit around a row of triangle tables?
Handouts with problem (more detailed than above, and showing table) will be supplied. Need triangles

10. Sheet with lesson. How would it change students’ experience of lesson
Sheet with lesson. How would it change students’ experience of lesson? Show video. Ask them to write in response to each segment
Treat as if colleagues in room
show dvd.

11. ? How Does Lesson Study Improve Instruction? Visible
Features of Lesson Study
Planning
Curriculum Study
Research Lesson
Data Collection
Discussion
Revision
Etc. ?
Instructional
Improvement
Fill in blue box: What happens to teachers, teaching materials, environment? Develop Theory of action
Make point that visible features may be done in way that supports or doesn’t blue box

12. Video Background Summer workshop
“Dive-in” lessons in borrowed classrooms
Help students develop curiosity about mathematical patterns, capacity to represent patterns mathematically

13. Visible Features of Lesson Study
Plan
Teach
Observe
Discuss
Etc.
Key Pathway
·Lesson Plans
Improve
Instructional Improvement

14. How Does Lesson Study Improve Instruction?
Pathways
Visible
Features of Lesson Study
Planning
Curriculum Study
Research Lesson
Data Collection
Discussion
Revision
Etc.
Increased knowledge of subject matter
Increased knowledge of instruction
Increased ability to observe students
Stronger collegial networks
Stronger connection of daily practice to long-term goals
Stronger motivation and sense of efficacy
Improved materials
Instructional
Improvement
How many had experience of promising approach discarded before tried deeply?
Due to focus on visible, not underlying pathways--lots of reasons
Math manipulatives example
Middle box often thought just to be lesson plan
Have participants develop "theory of action" of how lesson study builds instructional improvement, usingattached chart w question mark.  What tools, in the chapter andelsewhere, would help build effective lesson study?  Why?  participantsbriefly explore chapter tools, share out thought on posters about whytools may be useful in enabling center part of chart (question markarea--processes that go between lesson study and instructionalimprovement)
Planning

15. Pathway: Increased Ability to Observe Students
Visible Features of Lesson Study:
Teachers try student task themselves
Pre-interview students to see how they think
Multiple observers on same students
Full narrative observations
Multiple cycles, make task more “thought-revealing” each time

16. Data Collected During Lesson Study
Academic Learning
Did students shift from counting by 1’s to more flexible method?
Did students try new solution strategies?
Did students draw on prior knowledge of ____
In their journals, what did students write as their learnings?
Motivation
Percent of children who volunteered ideas
Body language, “aha” comments, shining eyes
Persistence
Social Behavior
How many times do students refer to and build on classmates’ comments?
How often do the five quietist students speak up?
Student Attitudes Toward Lesson
What did you like and dislike about the lesson?
Explore existing tools, share what’s useful

17. Learning From and In Practice
Students
Often in interaction with each other. Jackie’s counting; other’s interp of curric
Teachers
Curriculum
Based on NRC, 2001 & Cohen & Ball, 2000

18. Ideas From Planning
Unit rate (value of a ratio) relates equivalent fractions;
Relates to measurement;
Uses division;
Units (e.g., of 1) can be grouped to form larger units (e.g., of 5)
We typically think in “simplest form” rather than have kids think about units
Where did this idea about unit rate come from?
It came up right away in their first planning session as they discussed an article on Asian conceptions of ratio. I just wanted you to see the pictures and read how Teacher 2 introduced this idea.
T2: “What’s really interesting is relating it back to that in-service in January about measurement. And I really like the idea of how they keep changing the size of a part… [This picture] starts out like the width of the rectangle is 20 cm by 30 cm, and considering 1 cm as being the unit quantity, the little piece that you are going to measure with, the ratio between the width and length is 20 to 30…. They really talk about…this is showing the relationship [i.e., 20:30] and this [i.e. 20/30] is showing the value… the relationship 20 parts to 30 parts and the value is… two-thirds. If you made 5 centimeters… your little thing that you’re measuring along the sides, then the ratio between the width and the length is 4 to 6 because that’s how many sets of fives will go across. So you have the 4 colon 6, but then the value of the ratio is now four divided by six or still two-thirds.”
Right away they built on these research materials and brought in knowledge from other professional experiences and about other mathematical content.
As they continued talking, T1 drew on her own experience about the fact that teachers don’t have kids think about units, but just tell kids that equivalent fractions have to be in simplest form “as if there’s a law.”
(Lo, Watanabe, & Cai, 2004)

19. Ideas From Planning
These methods differ from the standard cross-multiply and divide algorithm
(McDougall Littell, 2004)
As they were solving and talking about all the tasks, someone noted how they these methods were different from just cross-multiplying and dividing, like most of us were taught to do. This really got to thinking about the importance of problem context in helping students move away from an algorithm.

20. Schoolwide Lesson Study School

21. Statements focused on global evaluation (e. g
Statements focused on global evaluation (e.g., “your lesson was great’) or on fixed ability-focus (e.g, “she’s a low student”). Year 3 is zero in debrief, so doesn’t show. These two emphases might be thought of as the opposite of an inquiry & improvement stance.

22. . Over , the three-year net increase in mathematics achievement for students who remained at Highlands School was more than triple that for students who remained elsewhere in the district as a whole (an increase of 91 scale score points compared to 26 points), a statistically significant difference (F=.309, df=845, p‹.001).
California Standards Test in Mathematics: Mean Scale Scores, Grades 2-5
3-year net increase for school more than triple that for district (F=.309, 845df p<.001)

24. “The problem, then, lies not in the supply of new ideas, but in the demand for them. That is, the primary problem of scale is understanding the conditions under which people working in schools seek new knowledge and actively use it to change the fundamental processes of schooling.”
Richard Elmore

25. Professional Development
TRADITIONAL
RESEARCH LESSONS
Begins with answer
Driven by expert
Communication trainer -> teachers
Relationships hierarchical
Research informs practice
Begins with question
Driven by participants
Communication among teachers
Relationship reciprocal
Practice is research
Who made this. Paradigm shift. Use this w/outside knowledgeable others.
By Lynn Liptak, Paterson School #2, New Jersey.

26. Teachers’ Activities to Improve Instruction
Choose curriculum,
write curriculum, align curriculum,
write local standards
Plan lessons individually
Lesson study is simple idea, complex process
Plan lessons collaboratively
Watch and discuss each other’s classroom lessons
U.S.
JAPAN

27. We feel there is a great value in a public lesson
We feel there is a great value in a public lesson. It is an opportunity to put our work out for public scrutiny.
Lesson Study Communities, Massachusetts

28. Lesson Study Communities Team Reflection, Massachusetts
If we had to use one word to describe our work for the past two years, it would be COURAGE
.... to maintain this philosophy and pedagogical thinking as we struggled with our deficient MCAS scores … overcrowded classrooms…
Lesson Study Communities Team Reflection, Massachusetts

29. There are many ways to solve problems correctly.
And even more ways
to solve them incorrectly.
Teacher from San Mateo, California

30. I really see this as an opportunity - taking teaching out of the closet… giving it a professional dignity it hasn’t had Teacher reflecting at Foxboro Open House, Massachusetts

31. Until lesson study we never discussed the value of the content being taught. We discussed the different ways students learn (multiple intelligences), how the brain works, how to differentiate an inclusion class.
Never had those discussions involved a discussion of how to develop problem-solving techniques, how to develop a particular concept …what to expect for outcomes, and how to adjust the lesson to meet student needs. Lesson Study Communities Teacher, Massachusetts

32. Teacher from San Mateo, California
The opportunity to focus on two to four students’ learning was incredible…You feel like you are in
a true research mode.
Teacher from San Mateo, California

33. Lesson Study Communities Teacher, Massachusetts .
This experience has affected the way some of us structure our lessons, and has given us the courage to try challenging lessons
Lesson Study Communities Teacher, Massachusetts .

34. Even if you think you have thought of all the student responses ….
there will always be more.
Teacher, San Mateo, California

35. Lesson Study Communities Team Reflection, Massachusetts
Great trust has developed over time that allows us to be both teachers and learners with each other. Isn’t that what it’s all about?
Lesson Study Communities Team Reflection, Massachusetts

36. I feel the biggest mistake we can make when pitching lesson study to US teachers is to tell them it is easy and painless. It is hard and possibly painful and they should prepare for it. The rewards, however, are fantastic. Real, concrete, observable improvement occurs in teaching. Middle School Math Teacher, Paterson School #2, New Jersey

37. Further Information Lesson Study: A Handbook..(Lewis) (www.rbs.org)
(Mills College Lesson Study Group)
(Lesson Study Research Group, Teachers’ College)
(Global Education Resources)

38. clewis@mills.edu lessonresearch.net
address:
Website address:
lessonresearch.net

39. What did the teachers gain from their lesson study work?
For example, how might their work have affected their
Knowledge
Habits of mind
Tools and culture of teaching