Beyond "Lesson Study": Comparing Two Ways of Facilitating the Grasp of Some Economic Concepts

Abstract

During three discussion sessions, two groups offive teachers each developed a shared lessonplan, one for each group, for the teaching of adifficult economic concept, the incidence of asales tax. In one of the groups (the lessonstudy group), the lesson plan was based on thepool of the participants' experience andintuition in accordance with the Japanese``lesson study''. In the other group (thelearning study group), the lesson plan wasbased on the participants' experience andintuition as made sense of in terms of alearning theory introduced by a researcher inaccordance with the idea of ``the learningstudy'', in which the Japanese lesson study iscombined with a ``design experiment''. Thestudents' understanding was probed after theseries of lessons. In the classes of the lessonstudy group, fewer than 30% of the studentsdeveloped a good grasp of the concept, comparedto over 70% of the students in the learningstudy group. The differences in learningoutcomes are interpreted in the light ofobserved differences in how the concept wasdealt with in the different classrooms.