By Catherine Lewis

Journal of Staff Development, Summer 2002 (Vol. 23, No. 3)

Portions of this article are excerpted with permission from Lesson study: A handbook of teacher-led instructional improvement, (Philadelphia: Research for Better Schools), by Catherine Lewis, in press. © Catherine Lewis. All rights reserved.

I first learned about lesson study as I sat in Japanese elementary classrooms for months researching a book that had nothing to do with science instruction. Suddenly I began to notice levers and pendulums everywhere. Because of the way science is taught in Japanese elementary schools, I was seeing the science in daily life.

In Japan, teachers use a compelling problem or activity to "hook" students on a topic (such as magnets or levers), which students then explore through hands-on experiments coupled with intense, critical discussion of their findings, progressively honing their understanding over 10 to 12 lessons on a single topic (Linn, Lewis, Tsuchida, & Songer, 2000).

Japanese science education has changed from teacher-centered "telling" to a problem-solving approach (Lewis & Tsuchida, 1997). When I asked Japanese teachers how they learned to make that shift, the answer I heard again and again was "kenkyuu jugyou"--research lessons. Research lessons are the heart of the process called lesson study (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999; Yoshida, 1999).

Overview of Research Lessons

Research lessons are classroom lessons with students, but typically share five characteristics. They are:

Observed by other teachers. The observing teachers may include just the faculty within a school or a wider group. Some research lessons are open to teachers from all over Japan.

Planned collaboratively. In school-based lesson study, the whole faculty chooses the research theme or focus, typically a broad goal or vision of education that goes beyond a specific subject matter and lesson. School research themes include, for example, having students "take initiative as learners," "be active problem-solvers," "be active problem-seekers," and "develop individuality."

Designed to bring to life in a lesson a particular goal or vision of education. The research lesson does not just show how to teach a particular topic, but is an example of a goal or vision of education in action. This point was evident when I saw a research lesson on pendulums that was described as practice for a research lesson on levers that would occur six months later. What was practiced was not the content of the lesson but the whole approach to science education, in which students would "immerse themselves in nature and develop scientific ways of thinking."

Recorded. Teachers record lessons using videotape, audiotape, observational notes, and copies of student work. The data gathered depend on the goals of the lesson and the long-term goals for students. Often other teachers within the school are asked to collect particular types of data.

Discussed. A colloquium follows the lesson. Typically, such a gathering begins with presentations by the teachers who taught and co-planned the lesson, followed by discussion of the data collected during the lesson. Sometimes an outside educator or researcher also comments on the lesson.

Research lessons are conducted in all subject areas, and in non-subject areas as well--for example, on class meetings and special schoolwide activities designed to build community.

Types of Research Lessons

The most common research lesson is the "within-school research lesson" (kounai kenkyuu jugyou). These take place regularly (three to six times per year) at ordinary elementary schools throughout Japan. As one Japanese elementary teacher said, "Why do we do research lessons? I don't think there are any laws (requiring it). But if we didn't do research lessons, we wouldn't be teachers." Teachers decide the theme of research lessons based on a discussion of the qualities they hope students will have by the time they graduate (Lewis, 2002). Another form is public research lessons. In public research lessons, teachers from the local district, the region, or even the whole of Japan are invited to observe. When schools receive grants to develop some part of their educational program -such as computer instruction or international education--they often are expected to culminate their work in a public research lesson. Research lessons are a popular place to see new subjects or approaches in action. For example, when life environment studies replaced science and social studies for 1st and 2nd graders, teachers flocked to research lessons showing the new subject.

Research lessons also occur in other contexts. For example, the national conference of Japan's Elementary Science Education Association occurs largely in a cluster of elementary schools that volunteer to host research lessons. Conference attendees spend most of their time observing and discussing research lessons at the schools, and only at the end of the conference do they come together for a session. Research lessons are also central to the work of many teachers' study circles and to school districts' professional development.

The Impact of Research Lessons

Through research lessons, Japanese instruction is improved in many ways. Research lessons:

Provide individual professional development.
Japanese teachers mention research lessons' effect on their own professional development, including feedback on their own teaching and new ideas gained from watching others teach. An observing teacher shared the data she had been asked to collect during the research lesson: "Only 47% of the children spoke up today during your science lesson. To increase participation, you might have quickly polled all students."

In addition, teachers described influences on their philosophy of teaching. Many teachers underwent the same shift this teacher articulates:

"Through my work with the elementary science research group, I came to see education not as giving knowledge to children but as giving them opportunities to build their own knowledge. ...When I first saw lessons in which children were building their own knowledge, I thought, 'Is this kind of instruction really OK? It takes so much time.' But then I began to realize that if children don't experience something, they don't understand it. They can memorize it, but when the time comes to use it, they can't."

Research lessons have played a key role in the shift toward teaching for understanding in elementary science education over the past several decades in Japan (Lewis & Tsuchida, 1997).

Help teachers learn to see children.
When I asked Japanese educators what they learn from research lessons, I often heard answers like, "You develop the vision to see children." Research lessons facilitate that vision in several ways. First, student data are systematically gathered during the lesson (and often the larger unit of which it is part) and provided to all participants. Teachers gather evidence on learning, motivation, and social behavior, focusing on the school's research theme, the lesson's goals, and particular issues of interest to the teachers who planned the lesson. This evidence might include:

• Detailed observations of the participation and work of three children with different achievement histories in science;
• The number of students who designed experiments in which they controlled variables;
• The number of boys and girls who raised their hands to volunteer their ideas;
• Students' interest in pursuing the problem. Are their eyes shining? Are they muttering to themselves under their breath (tsubuyaki)?

In addition, lesson plans given to observers suggest what to look for in the lesson. For example, are the students actively engaged; do they exchange information in a friendly and effective way; do they think about controlling variables; do they bring to bear prior knowledge.

Spread new approaches.
Research lessons give teachers the opportunity to ask questions about a new topic added to the curriculum. In the discussion following a 4th-grade research lesson on solar energy, a teacher asked:
"I want to know whether the three conditions the children described--'to put the battery closer to the light source,' 'to make the light stronger,' and 'to gather the light'--would all be considered the same thing by scientists. They don't seem the same to me. But I want to ask the teachers who know science whether scientists would regard them as the same thing."

Research lessons are a meaningful, motivating context in which teachers can build their content knowledge.

Connect individual teachers' practices to school goals and broader goals.
When I asked teachers at Japanese schools how they chose their school research theme, invariably they answered that they looked carefully at their students and compared reality with their ideals. Research lesson plans typically have sections labeled "the current situation of our students" and "the ideal profile of our students." Nevertheless, school research themes show trends over time that clearly relate to national education priorities--for example, problem-solving, autonomy and initiative, individuality, internationalization, enjoyment of daily life. Japanese teachers connect their own school research themes to key themes in national educational policy.

Introduce competing views of teaching.
The research lesson system increases the likelihood that teachers will hear opposing points of view, rather than hearing only from like-minded colleagues.

U.S. education is often plagued by extreme shifts. No sooner is a hands-on, conceptual approach to mathematics advocated and tried than a backlash sends teachers scurrying for cover under math facts and skills. As I listened to Japanese teachers debate whether it was more important for students to acquire correct scientific knowledge or to practice scientific processes, I imagined how different the situation would be in the U.S. if teachers with opposing viewpoints planned, viewed, and discussed lessons together.

The more frequently different views of science education come into contact around a shared, concrete lesson, the more likely teachers are to find ways to see and combine the strengths of content-centered and process-centered approaches--and the more likely they are to notice the benefits that students can derive from each.

Create demand for improvement.
Richard Elmore (1999-2000) has said U.S. education suffers not from a low supply of good educational programs, but a low demand for those programs. Demand occurs when educators want to improve their practice. Research lessons may be a way of creating demand.

One teacher recalled how, early in her career, she burst into tears after seeing a wonderful research lesson by her fellow 1st-grade teacher:
"I felt so sorry for my own students. I thought their lives would have been so much better if they'd been in the other teacher's class. You realize you have had a big impact on your students. You see how authoritarian teachers have very quiet classes. Teachers who value students' ideas have very active classes. You see how teachers are creating a class, not just teaching a lesson. The teacher's way of speaking and the teacher's way of getting angry are all passed on to the students."

Shape national policy.
Research lessons may help shape national educational policy when ideas pioneered by classroom teachers at research lessons spread to other teachers, and, eventually, become part of the national curriculum. Solar energy entered the Japanese national curriculum in this way, after being demonstrated in research lessons.

A second impact on policy is through the outside commentators invited to observe research lessons, including classroom teachers, district resource teachers, university professors, or policy makers who may have been active in developing a new topic or approach. When they attend research lessons, they see how students and teachers are grappling with the new subject matter. Well-known science teachers may be invited to dozens of research lessons every year. They see how new approaches and topics are being implemented and understood in many different schools. In effect, this amounts to a system of "formative research" on policy. In contrast, U.S. instruction is a thick-walled black box--most assessments and professional development are hurled against it from the outside.

Honor the central role of teachers.
Finally, research lessons honor the central role of teachers. Japan's national educational guidelines are terse, underscoring the idea that policy is brought to life in the classroom, not on paper. The entire Japanese Course of Study for Elementary Schools spans just 122 pages of a half-letter-size booklet. The additional volume provided for each subject area is, like the Course of Study itself, small and thin with the underlying assumption that research lessons, not policy documents, will define good practice. These documents provide overall goals--such as "desire to learn" and "problem-solving capacity" --and a small number of specific content goals (for example, there are three specific things to be learned about levers in 12 to 14 class periods). Research lessons provide a systematic way for teachers to bring policy to life, thoughtfully and collaboratively, pursuing both the overall goals like "desire to learn" and the small number of specific content goals.

Research lessons also allow Japanese classroom teachers to shape the future of Japanese education while keeping their feet planted firmly in the realities of classroom life. Though teachers do not receive increased salary or position by conducting research lessons, they have the satisfaction of conducting research that benefits their students and, in some cases, students throughout Japan if they publish articles, books, or videos about their lessons.

Supporting conditions

The Japanese educational landscape seems to support research lessons. It has:

A shared, frugal curriculum.
By U.S. and world standards, the Japanese curriculum is very spare. For example, the Japanese 8th-grade science textbook covers just eight topics, compared with an average of more than 65 for U.S. 8th-grade textbooks (Schmidt et al., 1997). Japanese teachers often take the content goals for the unit and research lesson directly from the Course of Study, and focus their discussion on how to interest students in the topic and help them master it, on anticipating student thinking and difficulties, and designing a lesson responsive to these. Similarly, because the content is set by the national Course of Study, Japanese teachers do not spend time at the district or school level in what U.S. teachers often call "articulating" what should be taught at each grade level, but they do, through research lessons, actually see how information from prior grades is being brought to bear (or not) by children. And Japanese teachers typically teach the same class for two years and, over time, rotate through all grade levels. So the content taught to other grade levels is likely to be content they have taught or will teach in the future.

Established collaboration.
The first time I asked a Japanese principal how to build a good climate for lesson study at a school, he mysteriously answered "beach volleyball." Eventually the answer became very familiar. Teachers developed good working relationships in many ways--practicing for a beach volleyball game against the parents, planning the teachers' skit for the school festival, and planning the 30 days a year of schoolwide activities such as hiking, school trips, sports day, and so forth (Lewis, 1995). Japanese elementary teachers routinely consult each other on lessons in the teachers' room (where teachers' desks are located, arranged by grade level), and they routinely take care of each other's classes, since substitutes are not hired for short-term absences (Bjork, in press; Sato, 1996; Sato & McLaughlin, 1992; Rohlen & LeTendre, 1996; Shimahara & Sakai, 1995). Japanese elementary teachers are generalists, but typically each teacher specializes in a particular area and takes responsibility for attending outside meetings of that specialty, and for acting as a resource to other teachers within the school for that subject.

A belief that collective effort can improve teaching.
Japanese educators act as though good teaching is created through continuous effort, just as they attribute student achievement to effort (Stevenson & Stigler, 1992). As one Japanese teacher said:

"Our textbooks are very thin with few explanations. ... Teachers have to fill in the blanks between the lines in the textbook. That is why we have to study about lessons. ... Unless you improve your own skills, you can't do a good lesson even with a good lesson plan or good textbooks. ... If you isolate yourself and do whatever you wish to do, I don't think you can ever conduct good lessons."

Japanese teachers believe collective effort is needed to improve lessons. In the collective teacher community, teachers believe they need to forge a common vision of good practice, while in a liberal community, vision and practice are ultimately matters of individual conscience (Westheimer, 1998). The downside of individual teacher autonomy is potential lack of coherence in children's experience. As one U.S. teacher commented, it does little good to build active problem-solving in mathematics in her classroom if it is not going to be honored by the following year's teacher.

Both teachers and students set goals for self-improvement in a "quest for character improvement (that) is close to being a national religion" (Lewis, 1995; Rohlen, 1976). Identifying one's shortcomings and soliciting and gracefully accepting criticism, shows competence, not failures to be avoided. And the collaborative planning of research lessons means criticism is generally shared with several colleagues.

Stability of educational policy.
General stability may enable educators to concentrate on policy changes that do occur. The comments of a Ministry of Education official suggest a timetable for change:

Instructional improvement time focused on instruction.
Japanese teachers spend relatively little time developing or aligning curriculum, or translating national standards into local practice. They have a frugal national Course of Study and a number of nationally approved textbooks from which to choose. Elementary textbooks are written by elementary teachers, based on their actual lessons. Because Japanese teachers start with texts that are teacher-written and lesson-based, they can afford to spend considerable time planning, observing, discussing, and refining actual classroom lessons. In contrast, many U.S. teachers spend time selecting and adapting curricula, articulating what will be taught at each grade level, aligning curricula with state or district standards, and finding or writing lessons to fill the resulting holes.

Focus on the whole child.
Japanese elementary teachers see their job as "raising" children - as promoting children's social, ethical, emotional, aesthetic, physical, and intellectual development. One teacher summed it up: "My most important job is to create happy memories" (Lewis, 1995). How Japanese teachers do this-- through family-like small groups, using unity-building activities, 30 days a year devoted to schoolwide festivals, emphasizing students' personal goal-setting and reflection rather than adult-imposed rules and rewards - is beyond the scope of this article. But the concern with the whole child may be an important instructional support. Japanese lessons may not transfer successfully to settings where students are used to extrinsic rewards, short-answer questions, and minimal responsibility for classroom management.

Conclusion

Could lesson study have a future in the U.S.? The graveyards of U.S. educational reform are littered with once-promising innovations that were poorly understood, superficially implemented, and consequently pronounced ineffective. If lesson study is to be any different, we must engage in it as learners, recognizing that lesson study is not a quick fix, but a highly developed approach (only a small bit of which has yet been introduced to the U.S.) that asks us to engage in long-term learning.

References

Bjork, C. (in press). Cultural foundations for professional growth: The influence of community in Japanese schools. Comparative Education Review.

Elmore, R. (1999-2000, Winter). Building a new structure for school leadership. American Educator, 2(4), 6-13, 42-44.

Lewis, C. (1995). Educating hearts and minds: Reflections on Japanese preschool and elementary education. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lewis, C. (in press). Lesson study: A handbook of teacher-led instructional improvement. Philadelphia: Research for Better Schools.

Lewis, C. & Tsuchida, I. (1997). Planned educational change in Japan: The shift to student-centered elementary science. Journal of Educational Policy, (12)5, 313-331.

Linn, M., Lewis, C., Tsuchida, I., & Songer, N. (2000). Beyond fourth-grade science: Why do U.S. and Japanese students diverge? Educational Researcher, 29(3), 4-14.

Rohlen, T. (1976, Spring). The promise of adulthood in Japanese spiritualism. Daedalus, 105(2), 125-143.

Rohlen, T. & LeTendre, G. (Eds.). (1996). Teaching and learning in Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sato, N. In Rohlen, T. & LeTendre, G. (Eds.). (1996). Teaching and learning in Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sato, N. & McLaughlin, M.W. (1992). Context matters: Teaching in Japan and in the United States. Phi Delta Kappan, 73(5), 359-366.

Schmidt, W.H., McKnight, C.C., & Raizen, S.A. (1997). A splintered vision: An investigation of U.S. science and mathematics education. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Shimahara, N. & Sakai, A. (1995). Learning to teach in two cultures. New York: Garland.

Stevenson, H. & Stigler, J. (1992). The learning gap. New York: Summit.

Stigler, J. & Hiebert, J. (1999). The teaching gap. New York: Free Press.

Westheimer, J. (1998). Among school teachers: Community, autonomy, and ideology in teachers' work. New York: Teachers College Press.

Yoshida, M. (1999). Lesson study: A case study of a Japanese approach to improving instruction through school-based teacher development. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago.

Catherine Lewis is senior research scientist and visiting professor in the Education Department of Mills College. You can contact her at 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94613, (510) 430-3129, fax (510) 430-3233, e-mail: clewis@mills.edu. Web site: www.lessonresearch.net.