Lesson study

Lesson study (or jugyō kenkyū) is a teaching improvement process that has origins in Japanese elementary education, where it is a widespread professional development practice. Working in a small group, teachers collaborate with one another, meeting to discuss learning goals, planning an actual classroom lesson (called a 'research lesson'), observing how their ideas work in a live lessons with students, and then reporting on the results so that other teachers can benefit from it. Lesson study (or jugyō kenkyū) is a teaching improvement process that has origins in Japanese elementary education, where it is a widespread professional development practice. Working in a small group, teachers collaborate with one another, meeting to discuss learning goals, planning an actual classroom lesson (called a 'research lesson'), observing how their ideas work in a live lessons with students, and then reporting on the results so that other teachers can benefit from it. In Japan, lesson study is done at the school, district, and national levels, with different objectives. School-based lesson study aims to address a school-wide ″research theme″, which may be content-specific (e.g. ″for students to see the connection between science and their everyday lives″) or cross-curricular (e.g. ″for students to clearly express their ideas and carefully consider the ideas of their friends″). Through multiple research lessons at different grade levels, a school faculty works toward a common vision of how to achieve their goals. Another common objective of school-based lesson study is to address changes in the national Course of Study, which is revised every 9 years or so. The median time for the planning of one research lesson in Japan is more than 5 weeks. Note that the goal of school-based lesson study is not to refine a single lesson. Although a research lesson may be revised and re-taught, this is not considered a normal part of the lesson study process.