Discover how Lesson Study benefits both students and teachers. Unlike scripted curricula that strip teachers of professional decision-making, Lesson Study values teachers by expecting them to be agents of improvement in their own classrooms. This resource empowers readers to oppose reform efforts that minimize teacher agency by offering an evidence-based approach to teacher-led instructional improvement. The text provides structures for attending to students’ interests, knowledge, and values when planning, teaching, reflecting, and revising instruction. It also shows educators how to use Lesson Study to design culturally responsive, differentiated instruction for the K–12 classroom. Use this step-by-step guide to develop professional learning communities; increase teacher motivation, efficacy, and knowledge; and support improvement adapted to local contexts. Book Features: Guides readers through three cycles of Lesson Study, taking teacher learning deeper with each cycle.Focuses on developing student understanding that supports meaningful instruction across academic areas.Emphasizes the utility of Lesson Study for informing culturally responsive instruction.Includes examples from a variety of grade-levels and content areas, featuring both pre- and inservice teachers.Includes additional resources and prompts in each chapter to guide application.

"Provides readers with a compelling rationale for the process, offers experience-tested tools, and suggests ways to address commonly-occurring challenges. This book will assist teachers, and those who support them, in understanding and implementing all phases of lesson study, from initial planning through sharing with others what was learned." —Dennis Sparks, Executive Director National Staff Development Council "A powerful teacher professional development process that focuses collaborative teams directly on the classroom, and the perfect tool for teachers, professional developers, and team leaders. Gives you everything you need to use lesson study to support teachers in thinking deeply about practice." —Roberta Jaffe, Science Education Coordinator, New Teacher Center, University of California, Santa Cruz Use this team-centered approach to directly enhance teaching and learning in your school! First introduced in Japan, lesson study has gained enthusiastic advocates in US educational circles as a powerful, collaborative approach that brings teachers together as researchers into the science and craft of teaching and learning in their classrooms. Teachers work as teams to develop a lesson plan, teach and observe the lesson to collect data on student learning, and use their observations to refine their lesson. Participants build their sense of professional authority while discovering effective practices that result in improved learning outcomes for their students. This "how-to" guide provides teachers, administrators, and team leaders with practical strategies, models, and tools. The book leads a beginning team through the phases of the lesson study cycle and provides an experienced team with new perspectives. Using examples from U.S. classrooms, this handbook: Encourages educators to generate and share knowledge Inspires a teacher-researcher stance Illustrates both the process and substance of lesson study Encourages collaboration Provides guidelines for avoiding common pitfalls Leading Lesson Study is an excellent resource for both experienced and novice lesson study teams, administrators who want to start a lesson study program, and lesson study team facilitators such as instructional coaches and professional development providers.

Lesson Study in Initial Teacher Education highlights the importance of embedding lesson study within initial teacher education programmes, including building partnerships, making time to carry out collaborative inquiries using lesson study, and frameworks for reporting on lesson study projects.

Ensure Conversations About Collaboration Get Results. This book lays out the theory and practice of Collaborative Professionalism. Through five international case studies, the authors distinguish Collaborative Professionalism from professional collaboration by highlighting intentional collaborative designs and providing concrete examples for how to be more purposeful with collaboration. Additionally, the book makes Collaborative Professionalism accessible to all educators through clear take-aways including: Ten core tenets, including Collective Efficacy, Collaborative Inquiry, and Collaborating With Students. Graphics indicating how educators can move from mere professional collaboration to the deep and transformative work of Collaborative Professionalism. Analysis of which collaborative practices educators should start doing, keep doing, and stop doing Collaboration can be one of your most powerful educational tools when used correctly, and turned into action. This book shows you how.

There is strong evidence that collaborative learning is beneficial to educational development. By engaging in collaborative activity, learners utilise each other's perspectives and experiences to solve problems and develop a shared understanding of meanings. Through dialogue and social interaction, learners are empowered to perform outside of their own individual capabilities. Collaborative learning has the potential to benefit learners of all levels of experience and in a variety of situations. This edited volume showcases a series of studies of theory and case-studies of practice. The book highlights the benefits and challenges of collaborative inquiry, and how these are best managed in practice. The contributors to this volume are comprised of educators from around the world, and collaborative approaches for learners across a broad range of stages of development are discussed. The authors highlight the rich diversity of approaches to learning through collaborative activity, and provide examples of good practice. It also addresses the increasing significance of technology in the support collaborative learning. The benefits technology can bring to collaborative activity have been recognised for several years, and many of the contributions to this volume demonstrate how the impact and scope of collaborative learning may be enhanced by the use of collaborative technologies, social media and Web 2.0 interactive platforms. The examples presented in this edited work illustrate that through technology, collaborative activities no longer need to be confined to the classroom, but may occur across geographical, cultural, and language barriers. Often overcoming these barriers within a collaborative environment proves to be of great benefit to the learners in addition to the knowledge gains offered.

This book introduces readers to the development of Lesson Study (LS) in the UK, making historical connections to the growth of Lesson Study in Japan, East Asia, the US and Europe. It explains how to conduct LS in schools and educational institutions, providing examples of compelling, externally evaluated impact outcomes for both primary learners and teacher learners, and vivid exemplars of LS in action across age ranges and curricular contexts. Each chapter presents international research outcomes that clearly demonstrate how and why LS has a place within teacher learning approaches that have the greatest impact and the greatest capacity building potential for creating outstanding teaching. This is supported by primary research evidence, and linked with contemporary and recent high quality research worldwide into pupil learning, teacher learning, school improvement and system improvement. The book illustrates the diverse application of LS for innovating or transferring highly effective practices in a variety of contexts to boost learning for children with a range of challenges and specific needs. Lesson Study provides a global perspective on the development of LS worldwide, exploring its impact on innovation, creativity, curricula and achievement in a variety of contexts. It will be of key interest to practitioners in schools and teacher education institutions, researchers, and policy and decision-makers at local, national and international levels. The book’s explicit focus on the leadership of local authorities will also make it valuable reading for all leaders of professional development and school improvement.

"At a time when so many educational policies fail to recognize and nurture the capacity of teachers to improve instruction, we feel enormously grateful for the learning community lesson study has brought to us." -Catherine Lewis and Jacqueline Hurd It's a simple idea: if we want to improve instruction, what could be more obvious than collaborating with fellow teachers to plan instruction and examine its impact on students? Lesson Study empowers teachers to improve instruction. Unlike one-size-fits-all professional development, Lesson Study allows teachers to bring their own pressing needs to the table. They seek out answers from one another, from outside specialists and research, and from careful study of students during lessons that incorporate teachers' collective knowledge. The result is a shared vision of good instruction. Lesson Study Step-By-Step shows new groups of teachers how to begin this journey, and experienced teams how to to deepen their work. It provides guidance through each step of the Lesson Study process, from building a group and homing in on a topic to conducting and reflecting on a research lesson. Strategies and materials are provided to support you each step of the way, including: a schedule for the overall process sample meeting agendas protocols for observation and discussion of lessons templates for development of the research theme and teaching-learning plan suggested processes for norm-setting and effective group management. Additional online resources allow you to explore video of teachers engaged in a mathematics lesson study cycle. At a time when so many school districts are already suffering from reform overload, why is Lesson Study so important? Because it supplies a key missing element in reform: a means to improving teaching and learning through a shared professional knowledge base. Lesson Study, Step-by-Step shows us how to make our schools places where we will all continue to learn.