Abstract
Lesson study is increasingly prevalent as a collaborative activity in which teachers take part to explore their practice. There are many variations in how lesson study manifests itself, even in Japan, where it originated. However, in Japan, fundamental to lesson study is a focus on collaboration in researching teachers’ professional practice. In this article, we draw on experiences of our collaborative research with colleagues in Japan to provide theoretical insights into how we might conceptualize and inform future developments of lesson study as action research that informs curriculum design and implementation. The approach taken develops ideas of the theory of didactical situations, and draws on the construct of boundary objects to understand Japanese lesson study. We identify a class of artefacts, didactical devices, that may provide a useful form of boundary object that supports the collaborative action research of lesson study. Although the particular focus of the work presented here is mathematics, the lessons that we draw should have applicability across the curriculum more widely.
Highlights
Japanese lesson study (JLS) is a translation of the Japanese words jugyou and kenkyuu
The context of the work reported here is mathematics education, the ideas relating to lesson study, action research and teacher learning have applicability more widely, and this is discussed in our concluding remarks
We introduce a new construct: that of the didactical device, which we consider as having the potential as a boundary object to facilitate collaborative action research by communities of teachers significantly in ways that can inform curriculum design, implementation and impact
Summary
Japanese lesson study (JLS) is a translation of the Japanese words jugyou (instruction or lesson) and kenkyuu (research or study). This suggests that it is in activities that explore transitions and transpositions between different communities of practice (Wenger, 1998), such as in lesson study or teacher research groups and classrooms and lessons, that new professional knowledge relating to teaching and learning can be constructed This perspective helps inform our work in design, for example, of curriculum materials (Wake et al, 2013, 2014). The activation of the device or artefact – in positive classroom actions and in teachers’ post-lesson discussions, in ways that support both student and teacher learning (the former of mathematics and the latter of the curriculum) – is considered as making it instrumental in use in different settings for different purposes From this perspective, to inform effective curriculum implementation, it is important to ensure that we have didactical devices as artefacts with the potential to be instrumentally used in two different communities: the classroom and the postlesson discussion. It is our contention that this theoretical perspective might inform the process of curriculum design for coherence in ways that allow for teachers to engage in co-construction of knowledge as they engage in the process of didactical transposition for effective learning
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