Transforming Education Through Lesson Study: Thailand’s Decade-Long Journey

Abstract

The development of teaching and the teaching profession is an issue countries around the world have been struggling to solve for many centuries. Lesson study, a Japanese way of professional development of teachers, dates back nearly 140 years, in 1872 the Meiji government invited foreign teachers to teach Japanese teachers about “whole class instruction” (Isoda 2007). Ironically, in 1999, Stigler and Hiebert brought back to the U.S. the same idea on how to present whole class instruction, “If you want to improve education, get teachers together to study the processes of teaching and learning in classrooms, and then devise ways to improve them” [Stigler 2004 cited in Fernandez and Yoshida 2004]. Although the education reform movement around the world calls for effective reform tools or even ideas like Japanese lesson study, transferring those tools/ideas to other socio-cultural setting in other countries is not easy and always complicated. Thus, education reform movements sometimes support but sometimes hinder movement of society. Taking Japan as a case study, Japan has undergone the movement of society from agricultural to industrialized, to information, and knowledge-based society during the two centuries since the late 18th century to the present. Not visible to outside people, an evolution in the approach to school has taken place in Japan, which supports the movement of society, which has not occurred in most developing countries, including Thailand. Thailand has looked to Japan for ideas and has been implementing lesson study since 2000 but with a unique approach to adaptation. Thailand’s experience with lesson study has been shared with APEC member economies over the last six years and has been deemed “quite a success” in improvement of teaching and learning of mathematics.