Enhancing teacher education through a lesson study application built with WordPress

Abstract

A WordPress Lesson Study Application (LS APP) was developed for an English teacher education program at a Japanese national university for the following two purposes: (1) bridge the gap between teacher education classwork and school practice; and (2) enhance collaborative reflective practice between student-teachers. The first was accomplished through linking student-teachers’ teaching practicums with theory and techniques learned in their university English teaching methodologies class using the tagging function of the LS APP. The second was accomplished through enabling students to give each other feedback on their lessons during their practicum using the LS APP. This paper describes how WordPress content management functions and two plugins were utilized to accomplish the two objectives. Then, it describes the lesson study process facilitated by the application. Lastly, the authors describe the extent to which the LS APP has linked theory and practice as well as the type of peer feedback student-teachers perceive to have benefitted from. The goal of this paper is to describe how WordPress functionalities have been used to facilitate teacher development, and serve as a practical case study of using technology to enhance teacher education.