From the classroom and hallway, 30 teachers are observing Mr. Yokota's 6th grade class of 40 students. As the observers take notes, Mr. Yokota teaches a lesson on division with fractions. He writes four problems on the board—3/5÷1/5, 2/5÷3/4, 1÷2/5, 2÷1/4—and asks the students to find the answers using what they know about division and fractions. After the students work with the problems for a few minutes, Mr. Yokota starts a class discussion of the 2÷1/4 example.
After the lesson, the observing teachers take the departing students' seats. Mr. Yokota describes how he prepared the lesson and then opens the floor for discussion and comments. One teacher asks why he did not start with an easier problem, 3/5÷1/5. Mr. Yokota responds that he thought about starting with this example, but he wanted his students to explore how division is connected to multiplication, and he believed that 3/5÷1/5 was too simple to promote a variety of solution methods. The discussion continues for about 90 minutes.
The 15 observers in Mr. Takahashi's 5th grade class include the principal and vice principal. One of the teachers videotapes the lesson. After the class, the principal offers brief comments, and then the leader of the group of 5th and 6th grade teachers who planned the lesson explains briefly how they developed it. The group then follows the school's four-stage lesson development model to discuss the specifics of the lesson. After 45 minutes, a professor from the university—an invited speaker—offers his comments on the lesson and gives a talk on the elementary school mathematics curriculum.
Inquiry Groups
Research lessons such as these, which take place within traditional Japanese lesson studies, have inspired the interest of U.S. educators. Stigler and Hiebert (1999), for example, have suggested that Japanese lesson study, or jugyou kenkyuu, produces gradual but continual improvement in teaching. In Before It's Too Late, the U.S. National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century (U.S. Department of Education, 2000) recommended the creation of inquiry groups modeled after Japanese lesson study.
A wide range of activities characterizes this kind of professional development, offering teachers opportunities to examine all aspects of their teaching—curriculum, lesson plans, instructional materials, and content. The research lesson is often the main component of lesson study and involves observations and critical analysis by many teachers (Lewis, 2000; Lewis & Tsuchida, 1998). An individual teacher or group of teachers plans a research lesson by studying the lesson's topic, ascertaining where the topic fits into the curriculum, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of typical approaches, and trying new ways to address weaknesses in the traditional approaches.
Where Do They Take Place?
The most common type of lesson study group is school-based (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999), with teachers from a single school collaborating on lesson plans. Lesson study groups at schools affiliated with Japanese national universities—similar to the lab schools that many U.S. universities have—play an important role because their mission is to provide leadership in the improvement of teaching. When these schools conduct a lesson study open house, they often attract hundreds of teachers.
Another common type of lesson study group occurs at the regional level. For example, some cities in Japan hold a citywide lesson study day, with different schools hosting special activities or lesson study groups on various subjects. The schools sometimes close at lunchtime so that teachers can attend these meetings in the afternoon. This arrangement is not unlike the statewide professional development day that some states in the United States set aside for teachers.
Finally, many lesson study groups in Japan are not affiliated with school systems. Some of these are national groups, with hundreds of members, run by university educators or classroom teachers. Teachers often join several different lesson study groups. Lesson studies are more common among public school teachers, but private schools also have their own lesson study organizations that meet regularly and include research lessons.
What Research Lessons Do and Don't Do
A research lesson is not a demonstration lesson that showcases a particular teacher or approach. Nor is it a formal report of research findings, presented by the teacher as if at a professional meeting. Instead, a teacher or lesson study group shares research findings in the form of a research lesson so that the participants can analyze the research data during the post-lesson discussion. A research lesson, therefore, must always include a post-lesson discussion in which all participants can reflect critically on the lesson.
For example, in a 4th grade mathematics research lesson, teachers attempted to modify the sequence of topics introduced during a unit on the area of plane figures. A teacher hypothesized that by starting the unit with the area of triangles, students could better understand the relationships among various formulas for obtaining the area of plane figures. The study group examined how the particular topic is typically taught and what research says about how students learn geometry. After analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of typical approaches, one teacher proposed an introductory lesson that focused on the area of triangles.
During the research lesson, the observing teachers took careful notes and closely watched students' reactions. After the lesson, the presenting teacher assessed her proposal, and all the teachers critically discussed the lesson. Some teachers noted how well the lesson engaged the students. Others discussed the advantages of beginning the unit with triangles instead of the traditional approach of starting with parallelograms. One teacher even suggested a rough outline of how the remainder of the unit could be organized. Although the group did not decide which approach was better—and such a conclusion was not possible from just one lesson—the participants left the lesson study meeting with new insights into how to teach this unit.
Myths About Professional Development in Japan
During a seven-month visit to Japan, I observed 60 mathematics lessons in elementary and middle schools, 21 of which were research lessons. As I watched the lessons and how teachers spent their days, I discovered that some common beliefs about professional development in Japan are untrue.
Many U.S. educators mistakenly believe, for example, that Japanese teachers teach fewer hours than U.S. teachers do. Especially at the elementary school level, Japanese elementary school teachers are generalists and stay with their classes all day, just as U.S. elementary school teachers do. In secondary school, Japanese teachers do teach fewer hours, but they are also responsible for many nonteaching duties, such as supervising student clubs. Moreover, homerooms in Japanese schools are the primary communities to which students belong, and teachers spend many hours establishing their homerooms as communities, including helping with school festivals and field trips. Japanese schools rarely have the guidance counselors and other specialists that many U.S. schools take for granted, so classroom teachers must play those roles, too. In general, Japanese teachers do not have any more free time than U.S. teachers do.
Another common myth about teachers in Japan is that they are given release time to participate in these research lesson activities. In fact, teachers in Japan are required to be on campus until 4:30 P.M., and they participate in many non-teaching duties between the time that students go home and the end of the official workday. When teachers are allowed time to meet in study groups, usually no other activities are scheduled during those periods. The time that teachers receive for lesson study during work hours does not reduce their teaching load, and they must meet in the evenings or on weekends when they participate in non-school-based study groups.
How to Emulate Research Lessons
What can teachers in the United States and other countries learn from Japanese lesson study? Here are some recommendations.
Develop a culture. Lesson study is a culture, not just a professional development activity. A successful lesson study group requires the development of a shared professional culture through collective participation (Birman, Desimone, Porter, & Garet, 2000). Such a culture can develop only if participants feel comfortable with one another.
The first step is to bring teachers together in a nonthreatening environment. For example, establishing video clubs (Sherin, 2000) or teacher book clubs (Goldberg & Pesko, 2000) might be a useful start. If such groups already exist, perhaps some members would want to develop an activity or research lesson and invite other teachers to observe it. If group members are not comfortable with sharing a lesson with a large group, they can start by trying the lesson on themselves and reflecting on it. In the Japanese teachers' culture, observing one another's lessons is routine, but such sharing is relatively rare in the United States. It is important, therefore, to build this culture of sharing slowly and carefully.
Develop the habit of writing an instruction plan for others. The instruction plan that accompanies a research lesson is detailed because the plan is not only for the teacher who teaches the lesson but also for the observers. As teachers write detailed instruction plans, they have opportunities to reflect deeply about the subject, students, and instructional approaches. The detailed lesson plan also gives observing teachers a focus as they watch the lesson.
Develop a unit perspective. A typical Japanese instruction plan is not just one day's lesson plan. It also includes the unit objectives, a discussion of the main ideas of the unit and instructional considerations, the sequence of unit goals with the number of hours to be spent on each goal, and lesson development. It carefully places the current lesson in the context of what will be taught in the unit, what was covered in previous grades, and what will be covered in future grades. Such a long-term perspective allows teachers to be critical about what is important in the lesson.
Anticipate students' thinking. When Japanese teachers develop their instruction plans, they also try to anticipate students' responses. In fact, a common instruction plan format describes the lesson development in three columns: tasks, anticipated student responses, and instructional considerations. The plans often include both correct and incorrect student responses. Thinking about how students might respond to a given task is one of the main activities of a research lesson.
Learn to observe. One of the most important skills needed in a research lesson is the ability to observe the lesson well. Japanese teachers often use the instruction plan provided by the teacher for making notes. Other teachers might use a paper divided into two columns, one for the teacher's activities and the other for students' responses to the lesson. Although some people are naturally good observers, many of us need intentional practice to improve our observation skills, such as choosing a particular observation focus or writing detailed lesson logs.
Because the focus of a research lesson is students' learning, observers should move around the classroom to observe students' work. They must be able to hear what the students are talking about and see what the students are writing in their notebooks. Observing teachers must be careful not to teach the students, even when the students are struggling. Always remember that the classroom teacher has reasons for choosing particular activities and that the observing teachers' role is to gather data for the classroom teacher. If you observe a struggling student, take a detailed record of the student's struggle. Such an observation, together with observations made by other observers, will provide data for the post-lesson discussion. The more specific and detailed the data are, the more productive the discussion will be for all participants.
Give teachers a central role. Teachers must play the central role in developing these practices. Yes, principals and supervisors can and must play an important leadership role as well. In fact, even in Japan, sometimes principals and a few committed teacher leaders have to push the groups for-ward. Eventually, however, teachers must have the authority to decide how these practices should continue and what issues to focus on. As Lewis (2000) notes, research lessons should honor the central role of teachers.
Where to Try Research Lessons
Professional development schools, magnet schools, and summer schools are ideal places to try research lessons in the United States. Because professional development schools emphasize developing a community of learners, the research lesson approach might be particularly amenable to that culture (Middleton, 2000). Magnet schools offer good sites for lesson studies with a content focus. Research lessons at summer schools benefit both students and teachers by providing learning opportunities that might not be available during the regular school year. In addition, a state-level teachers' meeting could include a research lesson taught by a content area supervisor. Trying research lessons in these and other contexts will inspire classroom teachers to develop and participate in this effective professional development culture.
