Prelims

Half Title

Lesson Study in Initial Teacher Education

Title Page

Lesson Study in Initial Teacher Education: Principles and Practices

Edited by

PHIL WOOD

DEBORAH LYNN SORTON LARSSEN

NINA HELGEVOLD

WASYL CAJKLER

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2020

Editorial matter and selection © the editors; individual chapters © the respective authors, published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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ISBN: 978-1-78756-798-6 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-797-9 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78756-799-3 (Epub)

Contents

About the Contributors

M. Neus Álvarez is a Lecturer and PhD student at the Faculty of Education of the Catholic University of Valencia. Her doctoral research deals with the effectiveness of lesson study in the teaching programme at the university. She is a member of the Interdisciplinary Group on Active Learning and Assessment.

M. Laura Angelini is an Associate Professor and Researcher at Universidad Católica de Valencia ‘San Vicente Mártir’, accredited by the National Quality Assessment and Accreditation Agency of Spain (ANECA) as Associate Professor, Private University Professor, and Assistant PhD Professor. She is the Lead Researcher of the Interdisciplinary Group on Active Learning and Assessment. Currently, she is implementing lesson study with undergraduate student–teachers and MA postgraduate students.

Fay Baldry is a Lecturer in Education at the University of Leicester, UK. In mathematics education, her main research focus is the exploration of how teachers shape the mathematics made available to learners through their deployment of resources and regulation of classroom discourse. Her interest in issues of equity and social justice means she has a particular interest in how teachers adapt their pedagogy for classes where students are placed with others of similar attainment (setting). In the field of lesson study, she has worked on collaborative projects with colleagues from the Universities of Stavanger, Loughborough and Nottingham, with a focus on the role of lesson study within Initial Teacher Education.

Raymond Bjuland is a Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Stavanger, Faculty of Arts and Education, Norway. His research interests are related to mathematical knowledge for teaching, collaborative mathematical problem-solving and classroom research with a special focus on teacher–student dialogues. He has been the Principal Investigator in a larger cross-disciplinary research project ‘Teachers as Students’ (TasS, 2012–2015) supported by the Norwegian Research Council where lesson study was implemented in the field practice component in two Norwegian teacher education programmes. He is also involved in a NORHED project (2017–2021), aiming at strengthening numeracy in early years of primary school in Malawi.

Hans Erik Bugge is an Associate Professor who holds a 100% position in Pedagogy at the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Stavanger, Norway. He also holds a 20% position at the University of Bergen as a Lecturer in Spanish Linguistics and Latin American History and Culture on a distance learning programme. His main research interests are learning, metacognition and metacognitive development, creation of meaning and interactional processes in the classroom context, especially related to foreign language acquisition.

Wasyl Cajkler is a Professor of Education at the University of Leicester. His research interests include lesson study, grammar in the teacher education curriculum and second language learning. Chair of the Lesson Study Research Group at Leicester, he has conducted a number of lesson study projects, reported in a variety of publications.

Janne Fauskanger is an Associate Professor in Mathematics Education at the University of Stavanger, Faculty of Arts and Education, Norway. Her research interests are teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching and their practices as well as mathematics teachers’ professional development in learning cycles of enactment and investigation as well as in lesson study. She has many research publications related to these research areas. She is also involved in a NORHED project (2017–2021), aimed at strengthening numeracy in early years of primary school in Malawi. Lesson study is an important part of this project.

Colin Foster is a Reader in Mathematics Education in the Mathematics Education Centre at Loughborough University, UK. His research interests focus on the learning and teaching of mathematics in ways that support students’ conceptual understanding. He is particularly interested in the design of classroom tasks that enable students to develop the necessary fluency in mathematical processes that will support them in solving mathematical problems. He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology, a Director of Shell Publications Ltd and a Fellow of the International Society for Design and Development in Education.

Nina Helgevold is a Professor at the University of Stavanger where she teaches various courses related to pedagogy and special education at Bachelor, Master and PhD level. Her research focus is on teacher education, how to prepare teachers to work in diverse classrooms and professional development through lesson study. She has been working with lesson study in schools, in initial teacher education and is currently involved in a lesson study project with primary teachers in Malawi.

Arne Jakobsen is a Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Stavanger, Norway. He has experience from many international research and development projects in Mathematics Education using lesson study in the professional development of teachers and teacher educators. He is currently leader of the project: Strengthening numeracy in early primary education through professional development of teachers in Malawi. His interests are mathematics, mathematical knowledge for teaching, lesson study and quantitative studies in mathematics education.

Deborah Lynn Sorton Larssen is an Associate Professor at the University of Stavanger where she works primarily with students studying English as a foreign language as part of their MA in initial teacher education. She has two research foci, the first is how to support her students’ own classroom-based research through the use of lesson study and the second is how the use of the Common Framework of Reference in languages can be integrated into feedback and assessment practices.

Inmaculada López-Lull has been a Lecturer at the Faculty of Education of the Universidad Católica de Valencia ‘San Vicente Mártir’ for 12 years. She has a degree in English Philology and a PhD in Psycho-Pedagogy. She has been training future teachers in the Spanish Educational lifelong programmes. She is a Member of the IGALA research group and works on several projects to improve learning, including lesson study implementation in schools.

Gro Næsheim-Bj⊘rkvik is an Associate Professor at the University of Stavanger where she teaches various courses related to Physical Education in Teacher Education at Bachelor and Masters level. Her research focus is on teacher education, mentoring and professional development through lesson study.

Julie Norton is a Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and TESOL at the University of Leicester, UK. Her research interests include lesson study, materials development, discourse analysis and ELT methodology. She publishes and supervises doctoral students in these areas.

Rebecca Charboneau Stuvland is an Associate Professor at the University of Stavanger. Her research interests include reading development and instruction in young EFL learners, use of digital technology in teaching in teacher education, lesson study in teacher education for pre-service and in-service teachers, and interlanguage pragmatic development in young EFL learners. She has used lesson study in professional development courses and ITE for seven years. Her current lesson study research addresses the role of the mentor in lesson study in professional development courses for teachers.

Chiara Tasso is an Associate Professor and Researcher at Universidad Católica de Valencia ‘San Vicente Mártir’. She has a PhD in Applied Linguistics and is a member of the Interdisciplinary Group on Active Learning and Assessment. She is currently training student–teachers in the implementation of lesson study in their teaching practice.

Chris Wilkins is a Professor of Education at the University of Leicester; previously a primary school teacher, he has extensive experience as a teacher educator, and has played a leading role in the development of collaborative working with schools in the design and delivery of initial teacher education. His research interests include teacher identity, widening participation in the teaching profession and in collaborative approaches to teacher professional development. He has led a series of transnational programmes addressing system-level reform of teacher development in the Middle East and North Africa. In recognition of his national and international contributions to teacher education, he was elected as a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2014, as a University Distinguished Teaching Fellow in 2015 and as a National Teaching Fellow in 2016.

Phil Wood is Reader in Education at Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln where he is the Programme Leader for doctoral studies. His research focusses on pedagogic and organisational change using complexity theory, process and time. He has focussed on the use of lesson study in higher education and initial teacher education.

Preface

This book results from an ongoing dialogue between three universities, each of which is dedicated to initial teacher education. They share a mission and a passion for an inquiry focus to initial teacher education, not just a standards or competency-driven view of what student-teachers should be engaged in during their preparation programme, be this undergraduate and typically four years long, or a postgraduate programme of one year. We believe that learning to teach involves much more than learning to use a repertoire of strategies and that teaching requires much more complex, context responsive and flexible expertise than can be represented in a list of discrete competences. The development of teachers’ research literacy needs to be embedded in initial teacher education, with opportunities that allow student-teachers to explore the complexity of the classroom and get true glimpses of what it means to be a teacher who can respond to the needs of learners in diverse settings.

Our dialogue began over a conference meal in Gothenburg where a number of the contributors were attending the world conference of the World Association of Lesson Study (WALS) in 2013. This chance meeting has led to a number of exchange visits, collaborative projects and publication of academic work. Eventually, at the 2016 WALS conference in Exeter, the idea for this book was born. After three years of interaction and sharing of experience, this seemed like a natural next step, given our common use of lesson study in the context of initial teacher education.

Lesson study has seen a rapid growth in popularity across the world over the past two decades, since the publication in 1999 of Stigler and Hiebert’s The Teaching Gap, leading to an expanding research base, publications and interest from educators beyond the lesson study community. This is no less true of the use of lesson study in initial teacher education. However, whilst there is an expanding literature focussing on the use of lesson study in this context, we could not identify a publication in an English medium which attempted to engage with, and discuss, the process of lesson study in initial teacher education, including some of the possible challenges involved. We accept that a possible limitation of the book is that it engages predominantly with research written in English, and that we therefore have not utilised research written in Japanese or other Asian languages; this is a limitation we are very much aware of and for which we can only apologise.

Initial teacher education is becoming an ever more complex sector, with demands on student-teachers relating to the need to become reflective practitioners, engage critically with research evidence, develop their own research literacy, and demonstrate a growing expertise in the classroom. At the same time, in many jurisdictions, there is a desire for ever closer working between schools and universities to improve the quality of new teacher preparation. These changes have led to the need to build structures and processes which support student-teachers and school-based mentors in gaining the most from the limited time they have together, often in placements that may last from 4 to 10 weeks, depending on the programme. If becoming confident, research-literate and reflective practitioners is the aim of initial teacher education programmes that involve more time in schools, then some consideration needs to be given to how inquiry into practice is built into student-teachers’ formative experiences. Lesson study is one way in which those involved in initial teacher education can meet these challenges and can help begin to point to further areas for development as young teachers begin their careers. It is with this in mind that we hope you find this book useful in helping you to develop lesson study further within your own teacher education contexts.

The book offers a theoretical overview on the characteristics of lesson study, exploring both principles and practice. It is not directly a how-to book, of which there are a growing number in Europe and North America, and not just in English (Dudley, 2011/2014; Lewis, 2002; Munthe, Helgevold, & Bjuland, 2015; Rauscher, 2019). However, we include discussion of examples of how lesson study has been applied in initial teacher education contexts and consider what has been learned from our experience and that of others. The book is informed by research carried out by the growing lesson study community, to whom we owe a debt of gratitude. In addition, it is informed by our own initiatives to use lesson study in initial teacher education, each of which we have mutually evaluated during our six years of collaboration. We believe that these exchanges of information, expertise and experience have enriched our programmes, leading to our conviction that lesson study is a powerful vehicle for practice development in teacher education.

Thus, the book’s purpose is to raise awareness of the power of lesson study to contribute to the preparation and development of new teachers and to consider how related challenges can be addressed.