This article appeared in The CSP Connection Vol. 2, No. 1, September 2001 and is an excerpt from her forthcoming book Lesson Study: A Handbook of Teacher-led Instructional Improvement.

“A lesson is like a swiftly flowing river; when you’re teaching you must make judgments instantly. When you do a research lesson, your colleagues write down your words and the students’ words. Your real profile as a teacher is revealed to you for the first time.”
                                              - A Japanese Teacher

Imagine this scene: All the teachers in an elementary school gather to observe a fifth-grade lesson on levers designed by the school’s upper-grade teachers. As the students struggle to lift a 100 kilogram (220pound) sack of sand, teachers scramble to record, sketch and photograph the students’ words and activities. At a meeting later that day, the faculty share and analyze these data, focusing on whether the lesson built students’ motivation to study levers, understanding of the lever’s principles, and movement toward their school-wide lesson study goal of helping students to “Value friendship, develop their own perspectives and ways of thinking, and enjoy science.” (“Can you lift100 kilograms?” The video of this lesson and discussion is available from lessonresearch.net).

The scene just described is a “research lesson” –an actual classroom lesson that is planned, observed and discussed by a group of teachers who are trying to bring their educational vision to life in the classroom. Such research lessons are widespread in Japan, and are beginning to spring up across the United States. They are the heart of a larger process, called “lesson study,” in which teachers work together to:

• Formulate goals for student learning and long-term development;

• Collaboratively plan a “research lesson” to bring those goals to life;

• Conduct the lesson, with one team member teaching and others gathering evidence on student learning and development;

• Discuss the evidence gathered during the lesson, and use it to improve the lesson, the unit, and instruction more generally; and

• If desired, teach and study the research lesson again in other classrooms, in order to further refine it.

Why has this approach recently spread to many US schools? What are the potential benefits of this approach and what challenges does it face in the US?

Why Lesson Study?
Lesson study is best known in the US as a way to polish classroom lessons. But Japanese educators see it more broadly – as a way to learn about subject matter, students, and teaching; as a way to bring their educational vision to life in the classroom; and as a way to fuel system-wide improvement.

Teacher-driven and student centered. Lynn Liptak, principal of the first US school to practice lesson study (Paterson School Number Two in New Jersey), describes lesson study’s appeal: “Professional development that is going to make a difference to students in the classroom must be teacher driven and student focused. Lesson Study is both of these things. ”Lesson study draws on expertise within and outside the school, as teachers search out the most promising lessons and instructional techniques from the nation (or world) and improve these through careful observation of their own students. Over time, “the system learns” – not just individual teachers – as teachers continue to improve lessons through careful study of students’ engagement and learning.

Bringing standards to life. Lesson study also appeals to educators as a way to bring high standards to life in the classroom. Top-down mandates and highstakes assessment have well-known disadvantages, and many common forms of professional development appear to have little impact on instruction. By allocating time and resources to plan, observe, and refine lessons, lesson study recognizes that the classroom lesson is the heart of instructional improvement.

Targets long-term goals. Japanese teachers see lesson study as a way to bring not just specific standards but their whole educational vision to life in the classroom. They begin lesson study with the question, “What qualities do we want students to have when they graduate from our school?” and they focus lesson study on their long-term goals for students (such as friendship, enjoyment of learning, and development of their own perspectives), as well as on subject area goals (“to think like a scientist”) and goals specific to the lesson and unit (“to learn about the relationship between weight and distance from the fulcrum when a lever balances”). The focus on long-term as well as short-term goals makes lesson study satisfying to teachers. As one US teacher said, “Lesson study focuses on the long-term. Usually when you’re teaching you don’t have time to think beyond the immediate skills you want students to learn that day.”

What Challenges Does Lesson Study Face?
Japan and the US have vastly different educational systems. What challenges does lesson study face in the United States?

1. Time
Lesson study takes time. In Japan, lesson study meetings typically take place in the late afternoon, on paid time. (Japanese teachers are paid until roughly 5 p.m.) Some US schools have integrated lesson study into the school day or provided a modest stipend for after-school participation.

2. An Overloaded Curriculum
Lesson study focuses on how to teach, not what to teach. When teachers meet to coordinate what subject matter will be taught at each grade level, or to correlate the district and state frameworks, these may be very important activities. But they are not lesson study.
Lesson study may prove easiest if teachers share a common curriculum or approach. The Japanese
elementary curriculum is frugal. For example, Japanese teachers have ten or so 45-minute class periods to teach about levers – and just three things that students need to learn over all those lessons. In contrast, some American teachers may feel pressured to “cover” levers or other topics in just one period, packing in so much information that there is little room to study students’ thinking and engagement.

3. Emphasis on Self-Critical Reflection
A basic idea behind lesson study is that instruction always needs to be improved. Even the renowned Japanese elementary teachers whose research lessons attract thousands of visitors criticize their own lessons and expect others’ criticism. In contrast, the system of teacher observation for evaluation may press US teachers to hide their uncertainties, and encourage observers to engage in “happy talk,” rather than genuine feedback.

4. Collaboration
Japanese teachers routinely work together, and expect to borrow freely from one another — and from teachers across the country, through open-house research lessons and published reports. They believe students benefit from a coherent school-wide philosophy. As one teacher said, “What good does it do to teach my students to think like a scientist if that is not valued by next year’s teacher?” Japanese teachers explain their attitudes toward borrowing and collaboration: “If you shoot for originality too early in your development as a teacher, you’re likely to fail. Initially, you must take a lot from others… it’s through imitating others’ lessons you create your own authentic
way of teaching.” “Unless you improve your own skills, you can’t do a good lesson even with a good lesson plan or good textbooks. … If you isolate yourself and do whatever you wish to do, I don’t think you can ever conduct good lessons.”

5. The Graveyard of Educational Reforms
The history of US educational reform has been likened to a graveyard, filled with once-promising
innovations that were superficially understood, rushed to implementation, and consequently pronounced dead. If lesson study is to be any different, we will need to recognize its essential features – such as collaboration, focus on both short- and long-term goals, and careful study of students’ learning and development — even as we reinvent it for the US. Educators can begin by studying the examples of lesson study available in writing and on video. For more information and resources on Lesson Study, please visit the CSP website at http://csmp.ucop.edu/csp/.