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Ten years after its first publication, The Teaching Gap remains “a critical resource” (Publishers Weekly) for anyone involved in education. In pape…

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TEPSA: Douglass Elementary Lesson Studies

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Article: A different approach to teacher learning: Lesson study

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Article: A different approach to teacher learning: Lesson study

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A different approach to teacher learning: Lesson study

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In the United States, we tend to think that improving education is about improving teachers - recruiting better ones, firing bad ones. But the Japanese think about improving teaching. It’s a very different idea.

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Article: Using Japanese 'Lesson Study' to Increase Collaboration Among Teachers

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Article: Using Japanese 'Lesson Study' to Increase Collaboration Among Teachers

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In their new book Teaching Better, Brad and Genevieve Ermeling describe their first-hand experience with Japanese lesson study and the important lessons they learned from collaborating with colleagues. Today, they share some of their key learnings.
Teachers in classrooms around the world spend hours of class time each week roving between desks during student activities, group projects, pair work, or individual practice. As more school systems embrace an emphasis on deeper learning, teachers are spending even more time in this facilitative role to support students' collaborative work and problem solving.

In our ongoing efforts to observe and assist teachers in developing these skills, we are reminded of the lessons we learned over 20 years ago being "raised" as educators in Japan. Just after completing college and our teacher preparation coursework, we accepted positions at a K-12 Japanese school where we spent seven years immersed in the Japanese education system.

It turns out Japanese educators have a specific pedagogical term for describing this mode of instruction called kikan shidō (between desks instruction), carefully distinguished from a separate Japanese term, kikan junshi (between desks patrolling), which focuses merely on checking for right answers and behaviors.

The Japanese Model
We first learned of kikan shidō while participating in Japanese lesson study with a district-level research group in Saitama prefecture. Lesson study is a well-established form of teacher collaborative inquiry in Japan, which also gained popularity in the United States after publication of results from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) video study. The central feature of lesson study is the observation and analysis of live classroom lessons collaboratively planned by a group of teachers.

During one lesson study project hosted at our school, the English department prepared a detailed lesson for a ninth grade oral communication course and asked one of us to teach the lesson for the scheduled observation. The goal was to foster student development of more advanced communication skills to generate and sustain English dialogue. The lesson included teacher modeling and several extended pair exercises that challenged students to produce and practice authentic English discourse with classmates.

During the post-lesson reflection, one observer suggested a more systematic approach to the use of kikan shidō, pointing out that most of the between-desks instruction focused on a few pairs of students were struggling with the assigned exercise, while intermediate and advanced students received virtually no guidance or support. The observer suggested a shorter length of time with each pair focused on brief episodes of concise feedback.

Based on our specific lesson goals, he emphasized the value of using this lesson segment to gain a more complete perspective on the progress of all students, including any emerging patterns that might warrant whole-class attention. These observations prompted further analysis and revision of the lesson as the team discussed ways to more intentionally distribute and differentiate support for all students during kikan shidō without neglecting the lower-performing subgroup.

Results and Strategies
Our experience with this lesson study project and subsequent video analysis of our own classroom lessons opened our eyes to the importance of kikan-shidō as part of regular lesson preparation. The video footage illustrated in sharp relief the unplanned, cursory exchanges we came up with "on-the-fly" to assist or monitor student work, which mostly reiterated previous instruction and seldom advanced students toward deeper learning.

In another article we recently published in Educational Leadership*, we expand on a study by O'Keefe, et al. (2006), by illustrating four principal functions of kikan-shidō: (1) monitoring student activity, (2) guiding student activity, (3) organizing materials and the physical setup, and (4) engaging in social talk. We also describe how more intentional use of kikan shidō might help US teachers facilitate deeper learning for all students. The teacher's interactions and decisions during students' independent or collaborative "work time"-choosing what to focus on, how much time to spend with each team or individual, what to say or not say-has a crucial instructional value.

In our ongoing work to support schools, we have also found teachers need sustained, collaborative learning opportunities and new professional development resources to practice and refine this mode of instruction and facilitate deeper learning. Below are some example questions teachers find useful in preparing and reflecting on kikan shidō:

How does kikan shidō support the learning goals for this lesson?

What are my specific goals as I circulate?

How will I distribute my time with various groups and differentiate support?

What key understandings or misconceptions will I be looking for?

What probing questions will I use to check for understanding or advance student thinking?

What will I be careful not to say or do that might decrease the rigor of the task?

What materials will I need to distribute?

When should I engage in brief social conversation with students to provide encouragement and build relationships?

Using lesson study or collaborative inquiry to plan and reflect on lessons that incorporate these questions is one way to develop effective kikan-shidō practices. Carrying a copy of the lesson plan on a tablet or mobile device during kikan-shidō is also useful; teachers can review the plan on the fly during instruction and take notes as they observe students, perhaps even capturing audio and visual examples of student work.

Reflection
Teacher teams can then discuss these observations in post-lesson reflection meetings. As we describe in our book, they can discuss kikan shidō choices in the lesson, such as the the type of guidance teachers provided during specific moments of student interaction, or which groups they selected to present at the end of the lesson and how kikan shidō observations informed those choices. Did these examples help facilitate a rich discussion on the range of problem approaches? Given the options available from the various approaches observed in observations, what were some other possibilities, and how might they have added or detracted from the culminating discussion?

This kind of deliberate planning and reflection will help teachers develop increasingly nuanced understandings of the choices presented in each kikan-shidō episode and, most importantly, how these choices inhibit or enhance student learning. It's also a great way to introduce teachers to the power of collaborative inquiry and the important role observation plays in opening our eyes to alternative practice.

Note: You can also attend a live webinar with the authors on June 6, 2016. Register for this free webinar.

*Ermeling, B. A., & Graff-Ermeling, G. (2014, October). Teaching between desks. Educational Leadership, 72(2), 55-60. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. ©2014 by ASCD. Adapted with permission.
Photo of teacher and students in Japanese classroom courtesy of Asia Society.

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Using Japanese 'Lesson Study' to Increase Collaboration Among Teachers (Opinion)

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In their new book Teaching Better, Brad and Genevieve Ermeling describe their first-hand experience with Japanese lesson study and the important lessons they learned from collaborating with colleagues. Today, they share some of their key learnings. Teachers in classrooms around the world spend hours of class time each week roving between desks during student activities, group projects, pair work, or individual practice.

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Lesson study helps teachers improve by focusing on collaboratively planning and revising a single lesson.

There's a form of cogent professional development that requires teachers to collaboratively create, participate in, and reflect on a lesson. It's called lesson study, and it's research-based, student-centered, and eye-opening.

What Is Lesson Study?

In lesson study, one teacher teaches a team-crafted lesson while their team observes. I was on a team with two classmates from my online graduate course, but the number of teammates can vary. The lesson the team works on is called a "research lesson" because it's grounded in the research and best practices that team members bring to the process after agreeing upon the learning goals. After discussions and improvements, a second teacher teaches the revised research lesson.

1. Creating the study curriculum and formulating goals: To begin the work of relationship-building, my two teammates and I discussed what our classrooms looked and sounded like. We determined our goals for our lesson, and voted upon a number of tasks that we felt were aligned with our goals. We agreed to use an instructional framework outlined in the book 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions to guide our lesson.

SMP 1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

SMP 5: Use appropriate tools strategically.

Our goal was to explore the first and fifth Standards for Mathematical Practice:

We settled upon Graham Fletcher's " Array-bow of Colors," a three-act task about using multiplication of two-digit factors to determine the number of Skittles in a jar. Our fourth and fifth graders knew various multiplication strategies but had no formal exposure to the standard algorithm. The strategy each student would choose would provide rich evidence about individual understanding of multi-digit multiplication.

2. Planning: Lewis and Hurd direct educators to find research content to support the focus of the lesson. This step creates the opportunity for teachers to deepen their content knowledge, share familiar instructional strategies, and create a bank of new ones.

This second step was critical to planning the research lesson because it required us to become aware of current research-based practices. Our research articles focused on types of questions that would facilitate, guide, and deepen our students' thinking. We read, took notes on, and debated resources such as "The Importance, Nature, and Impact of Teacher Questions" by Jo Boaler and Karin Brodie, in order to apply our newfound information to our lesson.

We also took time to solve the task ourselves in as many ways as possible to anticipate student computations and misconceptions, create questions that we would ask to facilitate student thinking, and plan alternatives and extensions for struggling and advanced students.

3. Teaching the research lesson: In a normal lesson study, the teacher team is in the classroom for the teaching of the research lesson, observing and recording how student learning is impacted by the lesson design and how students react during the task.

Because my teammates and I don't live in the same place, they were not in the room when I went first and taught it, so I recorded the lesson, which helped me critique myself. My reflections and the critical feedback of my teammates were both data for revising the lesson.

I asked several of the questions my teammates and I had generated together and recorded student work on an anticipation guide I had designed in order to connect the least sophisticated strategies to the most sophisticated strategies for the students.

4. Reflecting: In lesson study, teachers use things like student behavior, engagement, and interest level to analyze the depth of learning that has occurred. Reflecting requires teachers to discuss the supports they provided for students and, more importantly, to focus on the barriers to learning that may have been present in the research lesson.

Because we discussed the missteps in my execution of our lesson plan, my teammates and I adjusted (or retaught, in my case) accordingly to prevent these missteps from being learning barriers moving forward. These adjustments deepened our content knowledge as well, which is a compelling effect of lesson study.

Because I reflected upon the lesson from the students' point of view, my focus remained on how to enhance their learning and thinking. Strengthening student learning allowed me to strengthen my own capabilities.

Lessons Learned

Lesson study allowed me to, as Lewis and Hurd wrote, view my instruction "through the eyes of students and colleagues." It was a humbling experience, and it reminded me that even the best plans can be revised and enhanced.

Our lesson study was not quick-it took about four weeks. But there are shorter variations of lesson study that you and your colleagues can adopt.

If you decide to try a lesson study, I think you'll find that it can help deepen relationships, provide impactful learning for both students and teachers, and serve as valuable professional development.

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Lesson study helps teachers improve by focusing on collaboratively planning and revising a single lesson. There's a form of cogent professional development that requires teachers to collaboratively create, participate in, and reflect on a lesson. It's called lesson study, and it's research-based, student-centered, and eye-opening. What Is Lesson Study?

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Article: Teacher Development Research Review: Keys to Educator Success

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Article: Teacher Development Research Review: Keys to Educator Success

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Effective Administrator and Teacher Leadership

Leadership is second only to teaching among school-related factors that can improve student achievement, and it tends to show greatest impact in traditionally underserved schools ( Leithwood, Seashore Louis, Anderson, and Wahlstrom, 2004). Superintendents, principals, and others in positions of authority in school systems are instrumental in providing the vision, time, and resources to support continual professional learning, a positive school climate, and success for all students (Leithwood et al., 2004; The Wallace Foundation, 2012). Research shows that the following features of effective leadership can improve student achievement (Leithwood et al., 2004; Vescio, Ross, and Adams, 2008; The Wallace Foundation, 2012):

A vision of academic success for all students based on high expectations

A safe and cooperative climate for learning

Support and training to promote continual professional learning

Data to track and promote collaborative inquiry and practices that improve student learning

Cultivating leadership in staff, parents, and community partners

Great leaders focus on developing people's capacities rather than their limitations (Leithwood et al., 2004; Alliance for Excellent Education, 2011). Schools that foster trust among parents, teachers, and school leaders are more likely to see academic improvement than schools that do little or fail to foster trust ( Bryk and Schneider, 2003).

Teacher leadership is also critical for school improvement efforts to succeed. Accomplished teachers are most knowledgeable about how students in their school or district learn, and thus they are ideal candidates to lead professional-learning and curriculum development efforts (Vescio et al., 2008; Webster-Wright, 2009; Accomplished California Teachers, 2012). Teacher-advancement systems that effectively identify and support quality teaching include the following features (Accomplished California Teachers, 2012; Darling-Hammond, 2012):

Professional standards, such as those of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). Research has found that the National Board certification is a way to identify teachers who are more effective in increasing student engagement, learning, and achievement, and a variety of evidence shows that NBPTS-certified teachers may be more likely to stay in the profession, as compared to teachers who have not achieved certification (NBPTS, 2012; NBPTS Research page). Additionally, the standards themselves influence teacher mentoring, leadership, team building, professional development and evaluation, curriculum development, efficacy, and overall school leadership (NBPTS: Impact of National Board Certification page; NBPTS Research page).

Performance assessments that integrate evidence of teaching practices and student learning measured in a variety of ways (such as student work, lesson plans, assignments, in-person or video observations based on standards, and/or National Board assessment)

Consideration of practice and performance for teacher teams and individual teachers to encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing

Expert evaluations, with experts who include teachers who are trained in evaluation criteria and have demonstrated expertise in teaching the content and working with their peers

Useful feedback connected to professional-learning opportunities and reviewed by an oversight committee to ensure fairness and consistency

Extensive evidence of quality teaching for tenure (e.g., using Peer Assistance and Review programs as described in Darling-Hammond, 2012 (PDF))

To promote student learning and achievement, research indicates that teacher advancement systems should compensate teachers for their expert contributions, particularly in economically disadvantaged schools where teaching challenges tend to be greater (Accomplished California Teachers, 2012). Finally, researchers discourage the use of value-added modeling in teacher evaluation practices due to their low levels of statistical reliability across years and limited validity for detecting individual teacher effects (Darling-Hammond, 2012).

Job-Embedded Professional Development

When teachers receive well-designed professional development, an average of 49 hours spread over six to 12 months, they can increase student achievement by as much as 21 percentile points ( Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, and Shapley, 2007). On the other hand, one-shot, "drive-by," or fragmented, "spray-and-pray" workshops lasting 14 hours or less show no statistically significant effect on student learning ( Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, and Orphanos, 2009). Above all, it is most important to remember that effective professional-development programs are job-embedded and provide teachers with five critical elements (Darling-Hammond et al., 2009):

Collaborative learning: Teachers have opportunities to learn in a supportive community that organizes curriculum across grade levels and subjects. When teachers and schools engage in high-quality collaboration, it leads to better achievement gains in math and reading for students. In addition, teachers improve at greater rates when they work in schools with better collaboration quality (Ronfeldt et al., 2015).

Links between curriculum, assessment, and professional-learning decisions in the context of teaching specific content: Particularly for math and science professional-development programs, research has emphasized the importance of developing math and science content knowledge, as well as pedagogical techniques for the content area (Blank, de las Alas, and Smith, 2008; Blank and de las Alas, 2009; Heller, Daehler, Wong, Shinohara, and Miratrix, 2012).

Active learning: Teachers apply new knowledge and receive feedback, with ongoing data to reflect how teaching practices influence student learning over time.

Deeper knowledge of content and how to teach it: Training teachers solely in new techniques and behaviors will not work.

Sustained learning, over multiple days and weeks: Professional-development efforts that engage teachers in 30 to 100 hours of learning over six months to one year have been shown to increase student achievement.

Research on professional development for teachers has shifted in the last decade from delivering and evaluating professional-development programs to focusing more on authentic teacher learning and the conditions that support it (Webster-Wright, 2009). In the next section, we discuss models of professional learning that focus on supporting continual professional learning and community-based feedback cycles that help teachers to critically and collaboratively examine and refine their practices.

Professional Learning Communities

Professional learning communities (PLCs) or networks (PLNs) are groups of teachers that share and critically interrogate their practices in an ongoing, reflective, collaborative, inclusive, learning-oriented, and growth-promoting way to mutually enhance teacher and student learning ( Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, and Thomas, 2006). PLCs go a step beyond professional development by providing teachers with not just skills and knowledge to improve their teaching practices but also an ongoing community that values each teacher's experiences in their own classrooms and uses those experiences to guide teaching practices and improve student learning (Vescio et al., 2008). Research shows that when professional learning communities demonstrate four key characteristics, they can improve teaching practice and student achievement in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies subject tests (Vescio et al., 2008):

Successful Collaboration

Focus on Student Learning

Continuous Teacher Learning

Teacher authority to make decisions regarding curriculum, the processes of their own learning, and aspects of school governance.

In the following sections, we discuss several practices of professional learning communities that have received consistent support:

Video-based reflections

Lesson study

Mentoring programs

Grade-level teams

Video-based reflections: Using video to reflect upon teaching practice has been shown by several studies to improve teaching practice or student achievement ( Allen, Pianta, Gregory, Mikami, and Lun, 2011; Brantlinger, Sherin, and Linsenmeier, 2011; Roth, Garnier, Chen, Lemmens, Schwille, and Wickler, 2011). In one case study, teachers met regularly to develop video clips of their best teaching practices for the National Board Certification application (Brantlinger et al., 2011). This resulted in the teachers engaging in intensive discussions about mathematical discourse while collaboratively and substantively examining each other's practices (Brantlinger et al., 2011). Similarly, in a case study of four middle school math teachers who participated in a yearlong series of ten video club meetings to reflect on their classrooms, teachers in the video club "came to use video not as a resource for evaluating each other's practices, but rather as a resource for trying to better understand the process of teaching and learning" in a supportive, nonthreatening setting ( Sherin and Han, 2004). MyTeachingPartner-Secondary (MTP-S) is a coaching system that provides a library of videos showing effective teaching, as well as personalized Web-based feedback videos of teaching practice using the research-based CLASS-S scoring system to define effective student-teacher interactions (Allen et al., 2011). In a randomized controlled experiment of 78 secondary school teachers and 2,237 students, MTP-S improved teacher-student interactions and increased students' performance on standardized tests by nine percentile points (Allen et al., 2011). Science Teachers Learning through Lesson Analysis (STeLLA) is a professional-development program for upper-elementary school science teachers in which teachers develop two lenses for analyzing teaching, the "Student Thinking Lens" and the "Science Content Storyline Lens," to analyze videos of teaching practice. In an experiment with 48 teachers and 1,490 upper-elementary students, STeLLA improved science teaching and science content knowledge among students and teachers (Roth et al., 2011).

Lesson study: Lesson study is a form of Japanese professional development that engages teachers in collaborative analysis of lessons. It has grown rapidly in the United States since being introduced in 1999 ( Lewis, Perry, and Murata, 2006). One purpose of lesson study is to continually improve the experiences that teachers provide for their students. Teachers come together to work on three main activities: (1) identifying a lesson study goal, (2) conducting a small number of study lessons that explore this goal, and (3) reflecting about the process (including producing written reports). In one California school district, lesson study began when an instructional improvement coordinator and a math coach sent an open letter inviting teachers to participate in lesson study during the 2000-01 school year. In the first year, 26 teachers responded, and six years later, the school was still continuing the program. Student achievement data at Highlands Elementary School suggest that lesson study is paying off for students ( Lewis, Perry, Hurd, and O'Connell, 2006). Lesson study is used in the majority of elementary schools and middle schools in Japan but is rare in high schools ( Yoshida, 2002). For materials to start a lesson study community, check out these resources by Makoto Yoshida, whose 1999 dissertation brought the practice to the attention of U.S. educators, and Catherine Lewis, who conducts academic research on lesson study.

Mentoring programs: A body of research indicates that mentoring programs can increase teacher retention, satisfaction, and student achievement ( Ingersoll and Strong, 2011), as well as reduce feelings of isolation, particularly for early-career teachers ( Beltman, Mansfield, and Price, 2011). For example, a quasi-experimental study by the Educational Testing Service found that teachers with a high level of engagement in a large-scale mentoring program (California Formative Assessment and Support System for Teachers) improved both teaching practices and student achievement, producing an effect size equivalent to half a year's growth ( Thompson, Goe, Paek, and Ponte, 2004). Mentor relationships are most successful when the mentor is positive, pro-social, professional, and from the same teaching area (Beltman et al., 2011).

Grade-level teams: Grade-level teams focused on student learning have also been supported by research. In a quasi-experimental study in nine Title I schools, principals and teacher leaders used explicit protocols for leading grade-level learning teams, resulting in students outperforming their peers in six matched schools on standardized achievement tests ( Gallimore, Ermeling, Saunders, and Goldenberg, 2009). These outcomes were more likely for teams led by a trained peer-facilitator, teaching similar content, in stable settings in which to engage in ongoing improvement, and using an inquiry-focused protocol (such as identifying student needs, formulating instructional plans, and using evidence to refine instruction) (Gallimore et al., 2009).

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Teacher Development Research Review: Keys to Educator Success

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Leadership is second only to teaching among school-related factors that can improve student achievement, and it tends to show greatest impact in traditionally underserved schools ( Leithwood, Seashore Louis, Anderson, and Wahlstrom, 2004).

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Easily create surveys and polls to collect customer feedback, measure employee satisfaction, and organize team events.

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Douglass Dragons Japanese Lesson Study Check List (1)

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TEPSA Douglass Elementary Lesson Studies

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Amazingly Simple Graphic Design Software - Canva

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Day of Visits: Classroom Visit Data Collection Form

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Day of Visits: Classroom Visit Data Collection Form

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Summary Transforming Instruction at Douglass Elementary