Lesson Study Comes of Age in North America

Abstract

Lesson study, the dominant form of professional development for teachers in Japan, has spread rapidly in the U.S. since 1999. The authors discuss the growth and success of study at Highlands Elementary School in California's San Mateo-Foster City School District and identify conditions needed for scale-up. ********** IN LESSON study, teachers collaboratively plan, observe, and analyze actual classroom lessons, drawing out implications both for the design of specific lessons and for teaching and learning more broadly. Long the dominant form of professional development in Japan, study has spread rapidly in the United States since 1999. Previous Kappan articles have praised study's potential for improving instruction but questioned whether it might become one more short-lived fad. (1) Since 2000, we have followed the development of study at Highlands Elementary School, one of the first U.S. schools to adopt the practice. Serving just over 400 K-5 students in an urban/suburban district in the western U.S., Highlands School provides both an existence proof that U.S. teachers can use study to improve instruction and a window into the conditions needed for its success. (2) HISTORY OF LESSON STUDY AT HIGHLANDS SCHOOL As instructional improvement coordinator for a cluster of schools in San Mateo-Foster City (SMFC) School District in the late 1990s, Mary Pat O'Connell was looking for a professional development model that would support sustained, teacher-led improvement of classroom instruction. Lesson study, as described in The Teaching Gap, (3) seemed to fit the criteria that O'Connell and colleague Jackie Hurd (a half-time Highlands teacher and half-time district mathematics coach) had laid out. After reading about study, Hurd recalls, she felt certain we wanted to do study. How to do it was much less clear. Initially, O'Connell and Hurd teamed up with other district mathematics coaches, and O'Connell wrote an open letter inviting district teachers to try out study. (4) The initial 26 volunteers included three other Highlands teachers. With funding for substitutes and stipends for after-school work provided by the district, the Highlands group conducted two study cycles during the 2000-01 school year and presented the results to the Highlands faculty in the spring of 2001. (5) Nearly all of the Highlands faculty decided to begin study the following fall, and the remaining faculty joined the next year. Lesson study has continued ever since at Highlands and is now in its sixth year. Lesson study groups typically include three to six teachers from the same or adjacent grade levels. They conduct two cycles of study per year and share what they learn with the entire faculty at regular intervals. The faculty selects a school-wide theme (e.g., reduction of the achievement gap) that provides a common focus for the work of the study groups. Each study cycle consists of study of relevant background materials, collaborative planning of a research lesson that is taught by one team member while others observe and collect data on students, and a post-lesson discussion in which teachers share information and discuss implications. All members of the Highlands faculty now participate, and those who were initially reluctant have become active participants. Of 22 teachers currently teaching at the school, 14 have taught lessons, and six have made presentations about study outside the school. Highlands teachers have also taken the initiative to expand study from mathematics to language arts, social studies, and science. Mary Pat O'Connell became principal of Highlands in October 2001, and she has provided two hours per month within the school day for study, by reducing the number of faculty meetings and handling routine faculty business in other ways. …

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