Lesson study as professional learning

de Candice Bocala, Harvard University. Graduate School of Education

To develop as professionals, teachers need to learn about content, pedagogy, and their students within supportive settings. However, the opportunities for teachers' learning have historically been fragmented, preventing teachers from learning deeply, over time, or in ways that apply directly to their classrooms. In this thesis, I explore teachers' learning through a case study of one northeastern U.S. school district where a group of educators (i.e., district leaders, principals, and teachers) was participating in lesson study. Lesson study is a professional learning model that includes collaborative lesson planning, public observations of teaching, and team-based inquiry and reflection. The first study looks inward at lesson study by describing how it was implemented in practice and how educators who were new to lesson study ("lesson study novices") participated differently from educators who had more experience with the practice ("lesson study veterans"). Educators developed greater expertise in lesson study over time and through collaborative deliberate practice, or participating with purpose and with an orientation toward improvement. The second study looks outward, as the lesson study advocates tried to expand the model to others across the district. Using Coburn's (2003) argument that reaching "scale" means having depth, spread, sustainability, and shift in reform ownership, I conclude that lesson study had difficulty meeting all four conditions of scale. Having a small number of advocates is not yet enough to bring an effort like lesson study to scale without systemic change that incorporates new reforms directly into teachers' work. The third study looks across professional learning models to investigate how educators negotiated the fit between two reform initiatives—lesson study and data-driven instruction. Since each initiative made different and sometimes competing demands, educators needed to manage their responses in order to achieve coherence in their work. Achieving coherence relies not only on choosing to adopt, adapt, or reject particular initiatives, but also on understanding and then integrating multiple theories of change. Together, these studies explore whether and how lesson study might be a lever for educators to enhance their professional knowledge and for school systems to collectively improve instructional practice.