A Japanese-inspired approach to teaching is expanding in the Bay Area

lesson study

Commonly practiced in Japan, lesson study is a method for helping teachers develop their skills through cycles of collaboration, observation and reflection. A group of teachers designs a lesson and then observes students as it is being delivered. Teachers regroup, assess how the children responded to the lesson and refine it. The idea is for teachers to take the insight gleaned from that research and apply it to their teaching practice.
More information is available at the Silicon Valley Mathematics Initiative website -- www.svmimac.org -- and Mills College's lesson study site: www.lessonresearch.net.

A Japanese-inspired approach to teaching is expanding in the Bay Area

As the national school reform narrative zeros in on rewarding the best teachers and sorting out the bad apples, a quieter effort to shore up the teaching practice has taken root in some Bay Area schools.

It's called "lesson study," a Japanese-inspired teaching model in which groups of teachers plan, observe and refine -- and sometimes, reteach -- a lesson, based on how the children respond to it.

Rather than observing the teacher, research team members (consisting mostly of classroom teachers) train their focus on the students, recording moments of confusion, clarity and enthusiasm before reconvening to dissect the lesson they had created together. The idea is for teachers to take what they've learned from that one lesson and apply it more broadly.

"Often a very subtle difference in the question or the presentation of a lesson can make a huge difference in what children learn from it," said Catherine Lewis, a Mills College education professor who has researched lesson study for more than a decade.

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