KEEPING TEACHER LEARNING OF MATHEMATICS CENTRAL IN LESSON STUDY

Lesson study in U.S. schools, inspired by the Japanese approach to teacher learning, can strengthen teaching and classroom instruction, and build teachers’ professional knowledge. Lesson study brings together small teams of teachers to develop, test, and refine classroom lessons. This article shares lessons learned from the authors’ experiences supporting teams of middle and high school mathematics teachers who used lesson study to investigate mathematics, curriculum, teaching, and student learning. This article shares some specific strategies for focusing lesson study on teacher and student learning of mathematics that emerged in this work. The strategies include: (1) doing mathematics together with colleagues, (2) analyzing the development of mathematical ideas in your curriculum, (3) examining the development of mathematical ideas across grades, (4) sharing expertise on teaching the selected topic, (5) anticipating student responses, (6) observing student thinking about mathematics, (7) focusing the post-lesson discussion on mathematical learning, and (8) bringing additional content expertise into the team’s work. Each strategy is situated in the context of a lesson study cycle using examples from actual lesson study teams. The article also highlights key strategies and reflection questions for instructional coaches or other leaders to consider when helping teams incorporate these strategies into their regular lesson study practice.