During 2021-22 we are pleased to host a seminar series that focuses on Collaborative Lesson Research (CLR). This is an adaptation of Japanese lesson study that facilitates teachers as inquirers into their professional practice in their classrooms.
Lesson study has been considered as an effective means of improving teaching and consequently student outcomes in many countries and has attracted a lot of interest and activity around the world. Here in the University of Nottingham, our Centre for Research in Mathematics Education has had strong connections with colleagues at Tokyo Gakugei University and we have been working to incorporate forms of lesson study in much of our research and development over the last decade. Our wider community across the UK has established the educational charity, CLR, to support a collaborative lesson research agenda more widely.
It is the aim of this seminar series to bring together international experts, educators, and researchers to provide some insights into the academic and scholarly work that underpins collaborative lesson research.
How Can We Design Lesson Study to Support Teachers' Learning and School-wide Spread?
Dr Catherine Lewis, Mills College, Oakland, California
A group of US urban elementary schools have dramatically improved mathematics outcomes for historically under-served learners using school-wide lesson study. What can we learn from their success? This presentation will explore:
- the teacher learning at the heart of lesson study
- the potential of teaching through problem-solving as a shared focus of lesson study
- strategies for spreading lesson study within a school and beyond
Catherine Lewis, PhD, is a research scientist at Mills College, Oakland, California and internationally renowned expert on Japanese lesson study. She earned her doctorate in developmental psychology at Stanford, with a minor in Japanese Studies. She has worked to make Japanese elementary education practices and materials available to US educators, with a particular focus on lesson study (teacher-led, classroom-based professional learning) and mathematics teaching through problem-solving (an approach in which students build each new mathematical idea in the curriculum). She has directed 10 major grants funded by NSF, Institution of Environmental Sciences (IES), or private foundations focused on instructional improvement. These include a randomized trial of teacher-led lesson study with Japanese mathematical resources (Lewis & Perry, JRME, 2017, 48:3) that was identified by a What Works Clearinghouse criteria review as one of only two studies of mathematics professional learning (of 643 reviewed) to improve students’ mathematical proficiency.