What kinds of knowledge produced by Lesson and Learning Study are sharable and transferable?

Citation

Mun Ling, L. (2012), "What kinds of knowledge produced by Lesson and Learning Study are sharable and transferable?", International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, Vol. 1 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijlls.2012.57901caa.001

What kinds of knowledge produced by Lesson and Learning Study are sharable and transferable?

What kinds of knowledge produced by Lesson and Learning Study are sharable and transferable?

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, Volume 1, Issue 3.

Lesson study may be considered as a science of particulars, but as it positions itself in transnational space, an important question to ask is whether it can produce public professional knowledge usable by other teachers across cultures. If it is possible, what features of lesson/learning study are sharable and transferable? In this issue, this question is being addressed at different levels. At the macro level, insights drawn from adaption and implementation of lesson study can be distilled and shared. Tatang Suratno portrays the progress and challenge faced by practitioners of lesson study in Indonesia. Following a systematic review of the related literature to analyse practitioners and official points of view regarding adaptability and sustainability of the lesson study effort in Indonesia, Suratno asserts that there are two important practices that need to be improved: first, designing powerful lessons; and second, situating meaningful teacher reflection. Suratno proposes that there are three key features of teacher reflection in lesson study that would lead to successful implementation, namely: prospective analysis (Plan); situational analysis (Do); and retrospective analysis (See).

Yuta Suzuki's paper shows how the process of a lesson study can support teachers’ professional development. Suzuki examines closely the discourse in a lesson study and argues that some types of discourse support teachers’ professional development. The teachers’ discourse in a lesson study is classified into one of the following six categories of discursive modes: (A) Simple question and answer (B) Is the alternative teaching approach better? (C) What is the best way of teaching X? (D) Did the children learn what the teacher intended them to? (E) Did the teacher teach what the children actually learned? and (F) What did the teacher learn from watching the children learn? Of these, (A), (B), (C) and (D) are classified as problem-solving discourse, while E and F are classified as problem-setting discourse. By means of a case study in a Japanese elementary school, Suzuki shows that one of the teachers in the case study underwent remarkable change and this was attributed to the fact that this teacher was able to experience discourses with instances of E and F, which opened up opportunities for her to learn and become more student centred.

With respect to a specific lesson/learning study, we would also be interested in what features can be shared and are transferable. Do we need to describe the whole case study, or just certain features, e.g. the object of learning, critical features, patterns of variation and test items? This is the topic of interest being reported in two papers. Angelika Kullberg argues that since the knowledge gained in a learning study about the critical features points to what is necessary for students to discern in order to learn the desired capability, the knowledge produced in terms of critical features is possible to be shared. In her study, the critical features identified in a successful learning study on the density of rational numbers were communicated to four teachers and an experiment was set up to test whether these critical features can also be used to improve the learning of other classes. Each of these four teachers taught two classes. Her paper shows that all the classes in which the teaching enactment made it possible for the students to experience all the identified critical features learned better, while the classes which had some critical features missing did not perform as well. Thus, she concludes that students’ learning outcomes of specific objects of learning can be improved by sharing the critical features identified. Ulla Runesson and Gerd Gustafsson’s paper also explores how knowledge generated in a learning study can be shared, not by direct adoption, but as a basis for another learning study. They describe how Swedish teachers used the documented Hong Kong lessons as a resource, adapted the insights gained by the Hong Kong teachers to the specific group of learners and other conditions in the Swedish context. This “knowledge product” communicated was not a traditional lesson plan but in terms of theoretical notions like “critical features of the object of learning”, and patterns of “variation” and “invariance” enacted. The teaching arrangements and organization of the lessons were not shared. The similarities and differences between the Hong Kong and Swedish research lessons were compared. One can see that an advantage of this way of sharing the knowledge product instead of sharing the lesson plan is to give teachers greater freedom in designing the actual learning activities so that while participating in a professional learning community, the individualism that underpins the professional culture of teachers is still preserved. We welcome the reporting of more studies that look into how knowledge produced by lesson/learning study can be shared and used by other schools or cultural settings and what effects they bring about.

The paper by Tang Chiu Lang and Leung Bo Wah is a learning outcome of a learning study course at a teacher education institution. The first author, having taken a course on learning study during the second year of a BEd programme at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, attempted to apply Variation Theory in his graduate project in a primary school. This is an interesting case of how a student teacher applied theory learned in the context of one subject to practice in another subject. The paper reports how Variation Theory was being tested in the teaching of Cantonese Opera and only one specific aspect of Variation Theory was focused on: that critical features can only be discerned through experience of variation of the critical features. The study involved comparing two lessons on the learning of three types of speech in Cantonese Opera. The lesson of the control group was structured in such a way that the teacher explained and illustrated the critical features of each type of speech sequentially, but did not intentionally compare and contrast the critical features of the different types of speech, while the lesson of the experimental group was structured in such a way as to intentionally help the students to focus on the differences between the critical features of the different types of speech. It was predicted that students in the experimental group will learn better than students in the control group, and this was consistent with the findings.

Policy is increasingly driven by international comparisons and the desire of policy makers to understand the factors that give some countries competitive advantage. Whether we like it or not, the works of researchers are affected by the decisions of politicians, because they control the main source of research funding. It is important that we engage in conversation with those that can influence our work. In this issue, we have included a discussion piece from a distinguished politician, Charles Clarke, on the value of educational research. Clarke points out that the mutual respect of policy makers and researchers is not always as great as it should be, and his article seeks to understand why, and to propose some remedies. He raises many questions which he considers to be important, but regrets that there do not seem to be many useful answers to these kinds of questions, and this is because educational research appears to be addressing minor or introverted research interests, rather than offering answers to the questions which preoccupy policy makers. He makes a plea for researchers to focus on topics that will help to directly answer the general question, “How do we achieve educational success?”

Four responses to the discussion piece are included in this issue of IJLLS. Ference Marton puts forth the idea of ends and means. He points out that the questions raised by Clarke are not answerable because such questions are questions about means, and there are no universal answers to questions about means. Means are to be had in relation to aims. He points out that “What is educational success?” should not be a general question, but a question for each and every lesson in each and every school. The answers will vary with individuals and with each object of learning. Paul Morris points out that in essence Clarke sees researchers as the problem because they do not focus on finding out “what works” so that policy makers can act on those findings. He warns that researchers should be wary of defining their role as providers of policy briefs and attempting to provide simple answers to very complex questions. Catherine Lewis argues that four features of lesson study give it power to inform policy and transform practice. These include: attention to variation, a mechanism for scale up, a window on instruction for policy makers and creating demand for research. Ko Po Yuk describes how China has developed a longstanding mechanism for connecting the educational research and policy-making communities with the practitioners. She suggests that certain characteristics in China's education system, namely a de-centralized system of educational research, the focus on classroom teaching, and the valuing of wisdom of practice, may provide an additional perspective for us to understand the relationship between educational research and practice.

The editors of IJLLS hope the discussion that has started will continue and welcome further responses to this topic. We also welcome papers that initiate discussions on other new topics. In this issue, we are happy to have a paper with a student teacher as a co-author, and we hope that in future issues of IJLLS, we would have more papers from teachers and other stakeholders in education so that their voices can be heard.

Lo Mun LingCo-Editor