Active Learning and Teacher Training: Lesson Study and Professional Learning Communities

Kyoko Ishii

doi:10.14712/18047106.734

Abstract

Active learning is an innovation of teaching and learning and strongly connected to teacher education reform. A teacher’s role in a knowledge-based society is being shifted from a knowledge teller to a facilitator. It is diï¬cult to shift a teacher’s perspective from “how to teach” to “how students learn.” However, through a collaborative lesson study, teachers can discuss students’ learning in a classroom. The university can function as a facilitator to cultivate a professional learning community. This paper discusses the practice of active learning in teacher training at the University of Fukui in Japan. The faculty provides active learning for prospective teachers to engage collaboratively in scientiﬁc inquiry using physics by inquiry. Based on the viewpoint that teacher development is a continuous, lifelong process, and the teacher is a reï¬ective practitioner, teacher training should also be an active, lifelong endeavor. Moreover, the system and structure of the lesson study and collaborative reï¬ection promote a professional learning community. Both pre-service and in-service teachers develop pedagogical content knowledge through repeated practice and reï¬ection.

Highlights

The academics field has focused on the challenges of active learning; for example, the theme of the International Conference on Physics Education in 2013 was “Active learning — in a changing world of new technologies”
Active learning is an innovation of teaching and learning and strongly connected to teacher education reform
We have developed a teacher training program aimed at deepening the scientific understanding of teachers-in-training and have investigated the effects of using physics by inquiry (Ishii & Yamada, 2012)

Summary

Introduction

The academics field has focused on the challenges of active learning; for example, the theme of the International Conference on Physics Education in 2013 was “Active learning — in a changing world of new technologies”. The attention on active learning means that the interest of education has turned from “how to teach” to “how students learn”. Active learning is an innovation of teaching and learning and strongly connected to teacher education reform. Teacher training has concentrated on how to teach and has been conducted without students in places such as a university and a lecture hall. Education reform in active learning has not been promoted, and the study has not been collaboratively connected to school practice. The importance of collaboration and the professional learning community is discussed (Lieberman & Miller, 2008; Hargreaves, 1994), but is it clear how to cultivate and promote them?

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Conclusion