Lesson Study – Developing Contextual Variants   

What is Lesson Study?

• As Lesson Study has been ‘exported’ around the world there has been a tendency to see it as a fixed process

• In Japan there is no fixed archetypal approach – it is adapted to fit contextual needs

• However, some foundational elements can be argued to exist:

Collaborative process Focus on understanding learning to develop practice Detailed, critical application and reflection on a focused ‘element of learning’

Capture of learning in action (predominantly through observation)

A Perspective From Higher Education• Still a tendency towards ‘pedagogic solitude’ (Shulman, 1993)

• Discussion over generic pedagogy vs disciplinary specialisms

• New impetus for change through the TEF

• Lesson study - potential for embedding a culture of pedagogic development and innovation – one tool amongst many

• Scholarship and research base for those interested in HE teaching and learning

• Insights as a basis for moving beyond Scholarship for Teaching and Learning

Why Can’t Lesson Study Be participatory? • Work with international masters students (Wood and Cajkler, 2016)

• Addition of student perspectives to a basic lesson study model

• Student focus groups and interviews important for developing an understanding of the complexities of learning processes and student perceptions

• Some dissonance between observation and interview data

• Complexity of pedagogic and learning processes

• Issues of language and technology use particularly important

• Discussion has also helped us consider learning beyond the seminar room – reflection on ‘ecologies’ of learning

Lesson Study and Distance Learning – A Vehicle for Sensemaking

Guiding Considerations:

• Many students don’t fill in distance learning evaluations• Evaluations often too generalised• Evaluations are inherently retrospective• Evaluations often focus on activities, tutoring, resources, environments, but rarely learning and student action.

• Analysis often gets reduced to simplistic reflections on numbers

We wanted to develop an approach which allowed for:

• Formative module evaluation• Linked to curriculum development• To make distance learning review more than a ‘performative’ activity

• Putting pedagogy (interpenetration of teaching, learning, curriculum and assessment and their interaction with teachers and students) at the centre of the process

• Emergence and trialling of new approaches as a standard element of our work

1. Teacher group

identifies an issue as the ‘learning challenge’

2. OPTIONAL: teachers interview students concerning

prior learning and conceptual understanding

3. The teacher group

collaboratively plan a week long package to meet the learning challenge

4. Students complete the week-long work

package & teachers

interview them to discuss learning

experiences

5. The teacher group meets to consider the evidence from the interviews

6. Insights from the

evaluation are considered in helping plan the next work package of interest

Is this Lesson Study?

• Allows us to develop elements of the curriculum in real time, with student response and reflection helping shape the content and approach

• Students value the opportunity to give deeper, more critical views

• Deeper understanding of the complexities of pedagogies, with opportunity to respond and use formatively

• Rolling programme of curriculum renewal which is holistic – measured innovation and emergent understanding of student experiences/learning

• Synergy with research opportunities

‘Sensemaking is the ability or attempt to make sense of an ambiguous situation. More exactly, sensemaking is the process of creating situational awareness and understanding in situations of high complexity or uncertainty in order to make decisions. It is “a motivated, continuous effort to understand connections (which can be among people, places, and events) in order to anticipate their trajectories and act effectively.’

(Klein, quoted by Snowden http://cognitive-edge.com/blog/what-is-sense-making/)

Moving from Summative Evaluation to Sensemaking

• Seeing Lesson Study in HE as a vehicle for sensemaking

• Contextually relevant and apparent utility for improving practice

Seeing Lesson Study as a Philosophy rather than a Recipe• Lesson Study has a great deal of potential as a tool (one of many) to help develop praxis in pedagogy

• Needs to be contextually relevant if it is to have an impact

• But needs to include consideration of basic ideas and philosophies if it is not to become amorphous

• Being clear and critical about approaches – transparency of approaches and underlying assumptions

• But at the same time there is no archetypal and single ‘correct’ way of doing lesson study