LESSON STUDY

Japanese method benefits all teachers

"A lesson is like a swiftly flowing river. When you’re teaching, you must make judgments instantly. When you do a research lesson, your colleagues write down your words and the students’ words. Your real profile as a teacher is revealed to you for the first time.’’

— A Japanese teacher’s reflection on lesson study

By Joan Richardson

Results, December/January 2001

As a principal, Lynn Liptak has spent years observing teachers. But only recently has she been learning how to observe students and what they’re learning.

She and 16 teachers from Paterson (N.J.) School No. 2 are embracing a bold new professional development practice called "lesson study.’’ Lesson study is a century-old idea imported from Japan where it provides the underpinning for that country’s student-centered focus for schooling. It is rapidly attracting interest as a long-term school improvement strategy because of the hope it offers for sustained changes in teaching.

Lesson study is far more complex than simply having teachers write lessons together. It is neither lesson planning nor curriculum design in the traditional sense. Researcher Catherine Lewis of Mills College compares it to quality circles, a cycle of establishing long-term goals, measuring each piece of work against those longer goals, and then making changes. "You don’t just slavishly put changes into effect. You make changes, look at them very closely, and collect data to see their impact. Then you refine what you do and test it again,’’ said Lewis.

"One of the misconceptions about lesson study is that it’s about producing lots of different lessons. It really is about learning how children are learning. The lesson is a byproduct of the larger concern,’’ Lewis said.

"The Japanese say that lesson study develops the eyes to see children. I think that’s the heart of this.’’

School No. 2

School 2’s lesson study work grew out of a math study group that had seen videotapes of Japanese teachers. "Their teaching seemed so much more powerful than what we were doing,’’ Liptak said.

After some probing, the group learned about lesson study and tackled the idea on their own during their 40-minute weekly team planning time. "That first attempt really didn’t work out. We realized that we needed some real time to do this,’’ Liptak said.

The next year (1999-2000), by adjusting the schedule, Liptak was able to set aside 1 to 3 p.m. each Monday for teachers who volunteered for lesson study.

Teachers College researcher Clea Fernandez connected Paterson teachers with teachers from Greenwich (Conn.) Japanese School, a school established by the Japanese government to educate children of Japanese nationals in the United States.

The Japanese teachers made the 90-minute trip to attend School 2’s weekly meetings and mentor their American colleagues. Paterson teachers also traveled to Greenwich to watch lesson study in action. Paterson is believed to be the only situation where American teachers have embarked on lesson study under the guidance of Japanese teachers.

The 16 teachers broke into four working groups of teachers in two grades (For example, 7th and 8th grade teachers worked together, the 5th and 6th, etc.) They also agreed on two lesson study periods, the first in January/February and a second in April/May. Each group would focus on a single lesson to be taught in each of those periods.

(This differs significantly from the Japanese system, Fernandez said. In Japanese schools, as one group of teachers finishes its lesson study, the next group moves into lesson study, to be followed by yet another group. Fernandez said the system is more similar to passing a baton in a relay than the abrupt beginning and end in the Paterson experiment.)

Paterson teachers selected an overarching mathematics theme to guide their work: to develop instruction that fosters a deep understanding of mathematical concepts. Each small group then spent 15 to 18 hours developing each lesson, Fernandez said. After hours of discussing a single lesson, "ours looked quite changed. None of ours were just tweaked,’’ Liptak said.

The small groups began by studying existing lesson plans for that lesson and then brainstorming other ideas for teaching the same lesson.

(In Japan, this process is aided in a number of ways, said Fernandez and Lewis. Large bookstores carry published collections of study lessons that include teacher reflections about what worked and what didn’t. Schools have open houses to demonstrate study lessons for teachers from other schools. Open houses at some national schools in Japan can draw up to 5,000 teachers. Japanese teachers are also rotated in and out of a school about every eight years and bring their lesson study experiences with them.)

Each small group presented a draft of its lesson to the larger group, including the Japanese teachers, for feedback. Then they taught that lesson to a class as part of the regular curriculum. After the practice lesson, teachers evaluated the lesson and refined it before teaching it a second time to another group of students.

Each time the lesson was taught to students, it also was observed by other teachers. School 2’s math specialist and other teachers from the small group observed and took notes. When possible, other teachers from the grade level also observed.

Moving from lessons on paper to lessons in practice offered lessons in itself.

In a lesson for 7th and 8th grades, for example, teachers asked students to solve a problem in which a homeowner wants to put in a garden. She needs to keep her dog outside but out of the garden. The homeowner needs to put up a fence, put her dog on a leash and calculate where she should place the garden, the fence, and the dog.

"The story ran too long, it was too complicated, they couldn’t relate to the dog, the garden. They needed some prior knowledge in math,’’ Liptak said.

"It wasn’t a disaster. The kids just really weren’t that engaged in it,’’ she said.

So teachers decided to scrap the dog example and switched to another example using a folded paper fan.

"The fan was satisfactory but it still didn’t really grab them. We’re still looking for another example,’’ she said.

"We really watched how the children responded. We asked questions like: Was the wording of the question difficult? Did the problem engage the students? Are there other manipulatives that would show this example better? What kind of solutions did they come up with? Did they come up with the solutions that we considered most important? If they didn’t, why didn’t they?"

Lessons about observation

The classroom observations provided some powerful learning moments for the American teachers. "When School 2 teachers observed, most of them became another set of hands in the classroom. In essence, they began tutoring students. But the Japanese teachers were observers. They were another set of eyes. They watched. They took notes. They copied exactly what was on the board,’’ Fernandez said.

By the next observation, Fernandez said Paterson teachers had moved away from the tendency to jump in and tutor the kids. "But it wouldn’t have happened if the Japanese teachers had not been there and provided the example,’’ she said.

The practice lessons were not videotaped but the final, improved lessons were taped. That taught Liptak even more about the approach of American schools. "When we film, we tend to film the teachers. Someone watching said, ‘How am I supposed to tell what the students are doing if I can’t see the students?’ That was something we didn’t think of," Liptak said.

Good for American schools

Could lesson study work in American schools? Liptak and Fernandez are both enthusiastic and cautious.

"We can’t just imitate the Japanese. We have our own culture, both in this country and in this profession,’’ said Liptak.

Fernandez is not sure Americans are patient enough to invest the time necessary to reap the benefits of lesson study.

"Anybody who goes into lesson study because they want a quick fix is going to be disappointed. This is not quick. This is a long-term strategy. I think it will be a hard sell in this country,’’ Liptak said.