ISSN-L(PRINT):2435-813４ ISSN(ONLINE): 2435-8037

EVRI研究プロジェクト叢書 Vol. 7
Bulletin of the EVRI Research Project (Vol. 7)

Peace Education and Lesson
Study for Teacher Educator(PELSTE) 2022:
Localizing Lesson StudyEVRI研究プロジェクト叢書 Vol. 7
Peace Education and Lesson Study for Teacher Educator (PELSTE) 2022:
Localizing Lesson Study＊＊＊
Published by Hiroshima University Educational Vision Research Institute (EVRI)
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ISSN-L(PRINT): 2435-813４ ISSN(ONLINE): 2435-8037
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Foreword

Welcome to Peace Education and Lesson Study for Teacher Educators (PELSTE) 2022. Firstof all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the speakers, designated discussants, andparticipants for providing us all with truly insightful suggestions.
I was fortunate to participate in the 2019 International Network of Educational Institutes (INEI)
annual meeting in Toronto, Canada. I discussed many things with my colleagues from 11
countries under the context of the 17 SDGs. It left me with a profound desire to work with themfor a better, more peaceful world. Now we are encountering a very grave problem disturbing
the peace of the world. That is covid-19. Of course, various resources are needed to overcome
this problem, but I think we need the power of education now. I deeply believe that ouractivities as teachers and researchers could contribute to building a new, peaceful world.
One of the most important principles of Hiroshima University is the pursuit of peace. We aim
to develop intellectual attitudes that always seek peaceful solutions to the problems affecting
society and the world. We strive to make every activity valuable in line with this mission. We
will continue to have this kind of symposium based here at Hiroshima University in the future.
We invite all of you to participate in the next one as well. If we continue to share our further
outcomes, it will benefit all.
Finally, please let me thank the INEI members and my colleagues for supporting this golden
opportunity. I truly appreciate it. I am looking forward to meeting with all of you in the near
future.
Norio Matsumi, Ph.D.
Professor of Cognitive Psychology
Dean of the School of Education
Graduate School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan―i―

PrefaceGood morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. It’s just after 10 pm in Japan. I’m Professor
Kusahara, Director of EVRI, Educational Vision Research Institute at Hiroshima University. It
is a great honor to host the 3rd PELSTE 2022 as a symbolic winter school program in the INEI
network.
Peace Education and Lesson Study for Teacher Educators (PELSTE) is a series of academic
conferences focusing on peace education and lesson study for research-oriented teacher
educators. Hiroshima University has considered how it can show its research initiative andcontribute to the International Network of Educational Institutes (INEI). PELSTE results fromthe mentioned consideration. This year, as the third conference in the series, we invited
participants of PELSTE 2021 to come back and requested to report how they have conductedlesson study projects during the pandemic, how they have reconstructed the idea of lesson study,
and how they have localized it in their own contexts. Originally, lesson study should be
developed autonomously by in-service teachers on-site and face-to-face. However, throughvarious efforts during the pandemic, the possibility of overcoming this spatial, social limitation
has become apparent.
It is indeed exciting and fortunate that we have two of the leading researchers in this field, Dr.
Catherine Lewis and Dr. Christine Lee, here to discuss the critical issues I mentioned before.
We would like to express our gratitude to Prof. Maruyama, chair of the INEI Committee ofHiroshima University, and Dr. Matsumi, Dean of the School of Education at Hiroshima
University, for their generous support in organizing the conference. Also, I would like to thankDr. Jongsung Kim for his great contribution in preparing and coordinating the discussion.
I hope the entire audience will enjoy the three meaningful keynotes and discussion a lot.
Kazuhiro Kusahara, Ph.D.
Professor of Social Studies Education
Director of Educational Vision Research Institute (EVRI)
Graduate School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, Japan―ⅲ―

Contents

Foreward
Norio MatsumiiPrefaceKazuhiro Kusaharaiii

Introduction
1“Seeing Familiar as Unfamiliar”: What Do Jyugyou Kenkyuu
and Lesson Study Learn from Each Other?
Jongsung Kim

5Part I

Localizing Lesson Study: The Case of America, Brazil, and India
2

Localizing Lesson Study: A Case Study in Brazil
Agnaldo Arroio

13

3

Localizing Lesson Study: A Case Study in India
Indira Subramanian

23

4Lesson Study in Local Context: Culturally Sustaining
Pedagogies in Focus
Kaycee Rogers

35Part II

Discussion: The Achievements and Challenges of Localizing
Lesson Study
5

Learning from Lesson Study Around the World
Catherine Lewis

51

6

Are We Compromising the Core of Lesson Study in Local
Adaptations in Countries Beyond Japan?
Christine Kim Eng Lee

73

Part III

Answers to the Discussants
7

Beyond Localizing Lesson Study
Agnaldo Arroio, Indira Subramanian, and Kaycee Rogers

87

Closing Comments
8

Learning from PELSTE 2022
Agnaldo Arroio, Indira Subramanian, and Kaycee Rogers,
Catherin Lewis, Christine Kim Eng Lee, Kazuhiro Kusahara,
and Jongsung Kim

93

Introduction

Chapter 1.
“Seeing Familiar as Unfamiliar”: What Do Jyugyou Kenkyuu and Lesson
Study Learn from Each Other?
Jongsung Kim(Hiroshima University, Japan)

I’m Jongsung Kim from Hiroshima University. As a coordinator of this symposium, I would
like to give you the context of PELSTE 2022. Last year, the participants of PELSTE 2021, Dr.
Agnaldo Arroio from the University of São Paulo, Brazil, Ms. Indira Subramanian from the
National Institute of Education, Singapore, Ms. Kaycee Rogers from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, the United States, decided to implement what they learned about lesson
study in their own context. Today, they will present their lesson study projects from the UnitedStates, Brazil, and India, focusing on the project’s achievements and challenges.
These three presenters’ projects can be understood as educational borrowing. Lesson study isa translation of the term Jyugyou Kenkyuu. Jyugyou means lesson, and Kenkyuu means researchor study in the Japanese language. However, Jyugyou Kenkyuu and lesson study are not exactly
the same. Each country’s context makes lesson study outside of Japan unique. Manycomparative researchers argued that for better educational borrowing, and it is important totake a bird’s eye view of the wish to borrow ideas with an understanding of their socio-culturalcontext and premise. Three presenters already shared this bird’s eye view of lesson study at lastyear’s PELSTE 2021. Based on the learning about lesson study, they tried to understand thesocio-cultural context and premise in their settings, and they tried to localize lesson study intheir particular context. Today, we will listen to the presenters’ journey of creating lesson study
culture while accepting, adjusting, or renovating their own embedded culture.
Japanese Jyugyou Kenkyuu can learn from lesson study outside of Japan too. The presenters’
projects are unique, and the uniqueness gives Japanese Jyugyou Kenkyuu researchers
opportunities to reflect on their own contexts. And for that aim, I asked the presenters to answer
these four questions: (a) “Why did you decide to localize lesson study in your own context?
What is the value of the lesson study that you discovered?” (b) “What is the context of your―5―

lesson study project?” (c) “What did you and the participants do in the project?” (d) “Whatwere the achievements of your project? What kinds of challenges did you encounter while
localizing lesson study in your own context?” Three presenters will answer those questions
during their presentations, and we can utilize their responses as mirrors to reflect our own
lesson study projects and the context of the projects.
Therefore, this symposium does not end with sharing references for current and future lesson
study projects. Rather, it promotes “seeing familiar as unfamiliar.” With today’s threepresentations as mirrors, we hope the Japanese Jyugyou Kenkyuu researchers and the lesson
study researchers already familiar with it can discover and rethink socio-cultural context andpremise one more time.
We are very lucky to have three amazing presenters today—Dr. Agnaldo Arroio from the
University of Sao Paulo, Ms. Indira Subramanian from the National Institution of Education,
Singapore and Ms. Kaycee Rogers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And we are sohappy to have these two distinguished scholars of lesson study who are key members of theWorld Association of Lesson Studies (WALS). The first discussant is Dr. Catherine Lewis, theco-author of Lesson Study Step by Step and also the author of numerous articles about lesson
study. And the second discussant is Dr. Christine Lee from the National Institute of Education,
Singapore. Recently, she published an important book about the lesson study community withher colleagues, Stepping Up Lesson Study: An Educator’s Guide to Deeper Learning. Also, she
has written countless articles related to lesson study.
Without further ado, let’s start today’s symposium. We look forward to listening to yourthoughts on the presentations and discussion. Please feel free to share your comments andquestions in the Q&A box.

―6―

Localizing Lesson Study
The Cases of America, Brazil and India
Jongsung Kim (Hiroshima University)

1

1

From Jyugyou Kenkyuu to Lesson Study• PELSTE 2022
Three participants of PELSTE 2021 decided to
implement lesson study projects in America, Brazil,
and India.

• “Educational Borrowing” (Phillips & Ochs, 2003)“… takes a bird's-eye view of the wish-to borrow ideas
with understanding about their socio-cultural contexts
and premise” (Kim, 2021, p.10)

2

―7―

2

From Lesson Study to Jyugyou Kenkyuu• Uniqueness of individual lesson study projects in the world
RQ1. Why did you decide to localize lesson study in your own context?
What is the value of the lesson study that you discovered?
RQ2. What is the context of your lesson study project?
RQ3. What did you and the participants do in the project?
RQ4. What were the achievements of your project? What kinds ofchallenges that you encountered while localizing lessons study in yourcontext?

3

3

The Aims of the Symposium• Promoting to see “familiar” as “unfamiliar”
Rediscovering and rethinking socio-cultural contexts
and premise of Jyugyou Kenkyuu / Lesson Study• Providing cases as references for current andfuture lesson study projects in the world
1. Educator’s intention
2. Context and premise
3. Localizing process
4. Achievements and challenges

4

―8―

4

What is Jyugyou Kenkyuu/ Lesson Study?
Why is Jyugyou Kenkyuu/ Lesson Study necessary?

55

Dr. Agnaldo Arroio(University of São Paulo)

Ms. Indira Subramanian

Ms. Kaycee Rogers(National Institute of Education, Singapore) (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Presenters
6

―9―

6

DiscussantsDr. Catherine Lewis

Key members of WALS

(Mills College)

Dr. Christine Kim Eng Lee(National Institute of Education, Singapore)
7

7

Schedule
00:00 - 00:10 Introduction
00:10 - 00:25 The case of Brazil by Dr. Agnaldo Arroio
00:25 - 00:40 The case of India by Ms. Indira Subramanian
00:40 - 00:55 The case of USA by Ms. Kaycee Rogers
00:55 - 01:05 Discussion by Dr. Catherine Lewis
01:05 - 01:15 Discussion by Dr. Christine Kim Eng Lee
01:15 - 01:35 Presenters answer to the comments of the discussants01:35 - 01:55 Q&A with the audiences
01:55 - 02:00 Closing Comments8― 10 ―

8

PART I

Localizing Lesson Study:
The Case of America, Brazil, and India

Chapter 2.
Localizing Lesson Study: A Case Study in Brazil
Agnaldo Arroio(University of São Paulo, Brazil)

First I would like to, again, to say thank you for the Hiroshima University and theInternational Network of Educational Institutes (INEI) that are providing this meeting for us,
this opportunity for us to exchange, especially during this time of the pandemic around theworld. And also, I’m so glad because I had opportunity to take part of the first PELSTE in2020 that was in person in Hiroshima University and also last year, 2021, that was the firsttime that was carried out remotely. And also the privilege this year to take part for the 2022,
that we can start to share some experience that we have. And here on the screen, you can see
some pictures. That’s the first time in Hiroshima and a second time and then probably now
they’re taking some pictures for these 3rd meeting that we are having now. And I would try tofollow, OK, so who I am? I’m associate professor at a Faculty of Education, University ofSão Paulo or School of Education, University of São Paulo, that this school is placed on themain campus of the University of São Paulo is in São Paulo city, in São Paulo state in theSoutheast part of the country. And here you can see a picture of the main building where we
can find these three departments that this school of education used to be organized. And at
this moment, I’m the head of the Department of Methodology of Teaching and Comparative
Education. That means that in this department, we are addressing courses for the pre-service
teachers for elementary education that’s going to work in elementary schools and also for preservice teachers that are going to work in high schools and also at the same historic location
we have the graduate program in education that we supervise masters and PhD students
around the field of education in general, in all of the fields, I should say.
So, briefly, here you can find the website where you can find more information about schoolof education. There is the possibility to find information also in English and I guess also in
Spanish, but mostly in Portuguese. And due to the time, I’m going to start with the firstquestion that was posted for us. So why I decided to localize lesson study? After theseexperiences that I had previously (PELSTE), face-to-face and remotely, as I mentioned for― 13 ―

you. And also some experience that I exchanged with some colleagues from University of
Lisbon, Professor Mónica Baptista, that she was one of the important or key person that also
responsible for the introduction of lesson study for me.
So in Brazil, the lesson study was more practiced in Mathematics fields, in Mathematics
Education actually, I should say. It’s not so common in different fields of the curricula. So we
try to introduce in the Natural Science Education and also to use to other content that we
think that it’s important for the teacher training, the pre-service and in-service programs. Yeah.
So after participating in these two possibilities (PELSTE) that I mention, I guess that also dueto the context that we are facing here with the COVID that unfortunately is getting worse now.
Most of the school still closed during these two years. So it was clear that also the teachers,
the in-service teachers, they had a lack of knowledge to deal with this digital technology andhow they could carry their activities during this closure of the schools. And we decided after
this experience that I had, that maybe we could try to create an educational program tosupport these teachers to deal with these problems or these difficulties that they are having.
So we created a program, for in-service teachers, for teachers that are acting in elementary
education, but also at the same time, I was teaching for the undergraduate course for the preservice chemistry teachers. I also tried to introduce a system, practices of lesson study to try
to support their professional development during this time that we needed to do everything
remotely. So why the most value for me that I learned from lesson study? It was the sense ofcommunity, especially now in a very large country like Brazil, that we have a lot of
inequalities situation for teachers. We have teachers that actually they were not able to do thisremote education, due to the lack of equipment, for example, and the students’ access toInternet. So the context, I could summarize in two main contexts. One, it was addressed forthe pre-service Chemistry teachers that we tried to introduce, especially guidelines for using
on the observation step. I mean, the implementation and observation that is a part of thelesson study. I can resume as the design, observation, implementation or even observationand the reflection after this implementation of the designed lesson. But I think that the mostgain that we had during this time, it was that the pre-service understood how important it is toobserving without judging, because most of the time they felt like they were evaluated. So
people in general don’t like to be evaluated, especially in the context of education and thepressure that we are facing right now. So I think that it was one of the main gains that wehave then.

― 14 ―

For the second context, it was addressed before the in-service teachers that I mentioned,
teachers that work with students from 6 to 10 years old. So they teach all of the content asthey are the only one in the school, in some cases. They don’t have specific teachers for
specific content and they needed to introduce, according to the curricula: national curricula,state curricula and municipal curricula, the content of technology, digital technology. But
they have this lack of knowledge and this lack of practice. So this is the context that wegathered in these two projects. What we did? For the first group, the pre-service chemistryteachers, the design lessons we didn’t took all the steps for lesson study, but we are inspiredby the steps of lesson study. The designed lessons that should be implemented remotely. We
have students outside this digital environment. And I think that the main gain that we havehere it was to prepare the observations, create scripts and to discuss a lot about how important
it is to observe the lessons and to shift it from the focus of content, or conceptual content to
student learning. I think that these two points were I could say that, I could highlight fromthis experience that we did.
And also for the in-service teacher, we prepared educational program for six months that westarted last August in 2021, and it’s going to finish now next month, in March, 2022. At thefirst moment when we opened the program, because we couldn’t develop face-to-faceactivities. We feature this kind of in-service courses for them, which everything was done
remotely. This just announced that it was a challenge for us. At the first moment, we had
more than 1, 200 applications. We had applications from the whole country, different states,
different cities because it was not possible to address a specific group in one school in São
Paulo city due to the demand that we received about this issue. We cannot offer this kind ofcourse just for a specific group. It should be really open one when we do it in the School of
Education. It’s kind of to go against some privileged group. So we try to give access for all ofthem that really needed this kind of support. And after that, we selected just 50 applications
because it was not possible to deal with more than 1,000 of teachers yet during this remotetraining. And during this period since August until now, in the middle of the term, the second
term of last year, I could say that around September, October, the pressure to return to faceto-face situation at school increased it so much, it means that the working hours of teachers at
school increase, it also because they needed to deal with the face-to-face situation. And not
all of these students were vaccinated. Some teachers were partially vaccinated. So I think that― 15 ―

it was not just the pressure of working hours, but the psychological pressure and the work
conditions that they had during this time. Unfortunately, half of them, as you can see thenumbers dropped out of the course because they were so over-charged and they couldn’t
follow the daily activities. But we remain with 25 of them. We organized them in five groups,
according to the grades: first grade, second grade, and third grade, fourth and fifth grade,according to the class that they were working. But in these groups, they were in different
cities and different states. I think that it was a challenge, but at the same time, it was anachievement that we had during this time.
And during this time, they had every week meeting when they discussed about content for the
preparation. They designed lessons, they implement the lessons, they observed, and theyreflected during this time, especially because as they came from different states, different
systems, it was necessary more time to create this sense of trust or belief because they feltthat they were exposed. But I think that the achievements and the challenges that we arefacing, especially for the pre-service chemistry teachers, it’s connected with this situation that
we did everything remotely. I think that’s probably this year, we can return with the students,
the pre-service students going to school because for the last two years, everything was done,even the internship was done remotely. So now I think that the challenge will be to adapt tothis experience that we had during remotely in a face-to-face situation and going to schools.
And in this sense, I think that we need to reshape this program that we intend to them.
For the in-service teachers, I think that we had a lot of gains. Firstly, we had some teachersthat they were alone because they were the only one from that school or that state taking partof this group. And one of the real motivations that they had it was because they believe it andthey would like to improve their knowledge and practices that should teach with the digitaltechnology and also content. But as the only one, they didn’t find anyone to exchange
experience, to support them. And now even doing this remotely, they could create a kind ofsense of community (virtual). So they have a support from teachers, even in another state,because we could see during this time, that was increasing the number of exchanges that they
had, sharing documents, sharing lesson plans, sharing other kind of material that they usually
don’t have access because they don’t have people to connect to. And I think that they
connected by the interests right now about the content or the practices that they’re going toteach with students. And most interesting that I could say that we have it now, as I said, it’s

― 16 ―

just gathered for the next two months in March; finish this course after these six months. But
they are asking, requesting to continue it every two weeks or at least once a month, tocontinue doing this meeting to keep the exchange, the possibility that they realized that was
really important for them during this time. And I think that it was really important because
it’s connected with the second or the third slide that I presented, this sense of community that
I presented in lesson study. It was really remarkable for me, and I think that it’s increasing
this perception or preconception for them about the sense of community. And now I can saythat they are creating that kind of virtual community that was supported by the lesson study
practice that they had. And I think that this model of professional development for teacher
education is fostering this kind of virtual community because of the context that we arehaving now. So my last slide is just an acknowledgement to EVRI team the Educational
Vision Research Institute led by Dr. Kazuhiro Kusahara, and the all people that take part of
the area. Dr. Kim for the facilitation and support for us during this time and my colleagues
that join the PELSTE 2021, 22, Indira and Kaycee, it’s not easy to do this connection online,
but I think that we could do and we are having good results. Dr. Lewis and Dr. Christine forthe discussion that we are expecting to contribute to. And also there, the first group like
Isabella, Diana, Rija and Chawin that was the first participants of PELSTE in 2020 and also
for Mariko and Satomi and Aiko Hamamoto for the support that they had during these intense,
immersive experience that we had during these time, and now clearly for Hiroshima
University, for giving us this opportunity. So arigatougozaimasu.

― 17 ―

February 5th, 2022
Agnaldo Arroio
USP - Brazil

1

http://www4.fe.usp.br/en
2― 18 ―

Why did you decide to localize lesson
study in your own context? What is thevalue of the lesson study that you
discovered?
• In Brazil, it is best known and practiced in the area of Mathematics, but it is notwidespread and is not present in curricular proposals or public policies;• After participating in PELSTE 2020 (in person) and PELSTE 2021 (virtually) I wasable to better understand the involvement of teachers in the practice of Lesson
Study;• So I started in the undergraduate course to insert some practices such as
observation (because I consider it a very important step) so that the teacher
starts to look at his practice in another way, focusing on the students' learning;• Definitely what motivates me the most is the sense of community that is present
in Lesson Study, this in my opinion is a relevant value, it's like the soul;3

What is the context of your lesson
study project?
• I would say that there are currently two contexts, one of initial teacher
training focusing on Chemistry teachers, in which there is an adaptation of
the Lesson Study with a focus on observation (development of observation
scripts) to help change the focus for the learning of students (observing
without judging);• The second context refers to in-service teacher training, for teachers in theinitial grades of elementary school, focusing on the insertion of digitaltechnologies, especially in the context of the COVID19 pandemic;4― 19 ―

What did you and the participants doin the project?
• In the context of undergraduate teaching, students are organized into
groups to carry out teaching planning and application activities with real
students in the school. So, at the time of planning, observation activities
based on Lesson Study were inserted, preparing observation scripts with afocus on student learning, which was important for pre-service teachers
to change their concerns with the transmission of conceptual content;• In the context of in-service teacher training, a 180-hour improvement
program was created for teachers in the initial grades of elementary
education in public schools. Because of the pandemic, the program wascompletely remote from August 2021 to March 2022. We had 1250
applications, selected 50 teachers and we currently have 25 teachersenrolled. We had dropouts because during the period many schools
returned to face-to-face activities and some teachers were unable tofollow the training program;
5

What were the achievements of yourproject? What kinds of challenges thatyou encountered while localizing
lessons study in your context?

6•

In the context of pre-service teachers, Chemistry, the results were interesting
because it was possible to collaborate with the change of teachers' perspectives
for planning focusing on student learning, the perception of the importance ofobserving the class without judgment, and some degree of sense of community;•

The challenges of carrying out activities remotely without being able to actuallyfollow the students' learning due to the difficulties of non-face-to-face activities
and also not having a repertoire of LS experience in undergraduate courses;•

In the context of in-service teachers, in the improvement program, it has beeninteresting because despite the teachers being in different cities and evendifferent states, they managed to develop a relevant sense of community;
teachers also changed their conceptions about the observation of classes, at first
they believed it was for evaluation, but now they realize how much theobservations helped in the reflections and rethinking their classes;― 20 ―

What were the achievements of yourproject? What kinds of challenges thatyou encountered while localizing
lessons study in your context?
•

As for the challenges, in this context it has been to carry out the training
program completely remotely, and the increase in the workload of teachers dueto the changes in the pandemic. But I think there is also a lack of research on
non-face-to-face LS that could help.

•

But on the other hand, even with the reduction of participating teachers, it waspossible to notice how they improve their practices with the use of digitaltechnologies with their students. They are more confident and sharing theirexperiences in teacher groups;•

Even with the end of the program scheduled for March 2022, teachers
requested the creation of a group to continue meeting regularly to exchange
experiences. In this sense, it seems to me that LS practices are fostering a virtual
community of practices, which I think is a fantastic result in this current context.

7

Acknowledgements• To the EVRI team led by prof. Dr. Kazuhiro Kusahara;• To Dr. Jongsung Kim for the facilitation and support;• To Indira Subramanian and Kaycee Rogers, participants in PELSTE
2021 and 2022;• To Catherine Lewis, USA, and Lee Kim Eng Christine, Singapore, for
discussions;• To Diana Rodríguez-Gómez, Isabella Wong Yuen-Fun, Rija Saleem andChawin Pongpajon, participants of PELSTE 2020; as well as Mariko
Komatsu, Satomi Kusahara and Aiko Hamamoto for their support.
• To Hiroshima University and INEI.

8― 21 ―

Chapter 3.
Localizing Lesson Study: A Case Study in India
Indira Subramanian(National Institute of Education, Singapore)OK, good evening, everyone. And as Agnaldo said already, it’s a privilege to be here and toshare the learnings of lesson study in the Indian context with all of you. It’s particularly aprivilege to be in the midst of Dr. Lewis and Dr. Christine because their papers and theirreadings was what we used initially during our lesson study sessions.
Just to introduce myself. I’m a teacher and a teacher educator, and I’m currently pursuing my
doctoral research at the National Institute of Education, and I was invited to be a part of the
Lesson Study Group in PELSTE 2021. And then, of course, to localize lesson study in India.
My presentation is really going to be divided into four parts. Firstly, I’m going to talk about aflashback to PELSTE 2021, where, I’m going to talk about how did I use lesson study or think
about using lesson study in my own context. And by my context, I refer to to my prior work inteacher education in Indiapore. Then, I’m going to talk about the value of lesson study that I
discovered through my learnings in PELSTE 2021. Thirdly, I’m going to take you into a little
bit of lesson study in India in terms of the context and also give you a few glimpses of what
we did. I’m going to just present a small video in this section so that you will be able to hearfrom the participants’ own voices about their learnings and their takeaways from lesson study.
And finally, I’m going to conclude by talking about lesson study as a participatory model ofprofessional development, by highlighting both its potential as well as its challenges in the
Indian context.
OK, so going back, a flashback to PELSTE 2021, the key question was: How would you liketo use lesson study in your own context? And here I’d like to highlight to point out two things.
One is the professional identity of Indian teachers; education research shows us that Indianteachers tend to lack voice and agency, and this is largely because, they always have to balance
their professional identity between government regulation and policies, but also policy directedchild-centered assessment, which seems to sort of, you know, pull against each other. They’re― 23 ―

also, in a sense, a victim of the new liberal shift in Indian policy, which has an increasingemphasis on efficiency markers and external evaluation of teachers. And all this together meansthat by and large Indian teachers lack motivation and professional self-esteem. Place this withpresent CPD approaches in India by the different private schools or in government schools.
They tend to be top-down in its approach and lack of consultative approach. And again,
researchers point out that this results in a feeling of de-motivation because teachers are notconsidered to be knowledgeable practitioners because they’re always told about what to do. In
India, professional development tends to be a large scale project. It tends to be sporadic andnot necessarily need specific. And altogether, this makes it difficult to measure in terms ofimpact. So over here, I was curious to know about how lesson study can bridge this gap between
the current identity, professional identity of teachers and the routine professional developmentthat they experience.
Now, when I went back to PELSTE 2021, I saw that lesson study was immensely valuable forthe following reasons. One was that this model seemed to offer a participatory model ofprofessional development where the teachers contribute immensely to the selection of the
problem or the research lesson that they want to investigate. It also seemed to be systematic,
structured and situated in the context of the teacher. It also offered an opportunity to build theteachers own knowledge base by blending theory and practice. And because you were
investigating a research lesson, it helped to address the real practical problems in the classroom
and had a direct impact, therefore on student learning. Altogether, this meant that there was agreat potential for a personalized community of practice, which would not only enhance theprofessional growth of the teacher but also personal growth.
Now what is the context of my lesson study project? By and large, in India, we have three typesof schools. This is in terms of school management. They can be classified as government
schools, government-aided schools and private schools. Now, when we look at professional
development for government and aided schools, we generally require government permissions
to undertake professional development in government and aided schools. So for my end of thisproject, I decided to approach private schools because they have greater autonomy to decide
their CPD programs. They are more easily accessible. Another practical reason was thatteachers have better access to resources such as Internet computer facilities, which wasnecessary for me considering that we were going to do this virtually. Private schools tend to― 24 ―

have a greater buy-in for innovative CPD models as compared to government schools, where
you have to go through some sort of bureaucratic red tape. Now what was my lesson study
context? It included six features that is including myself and I recruited them from three Indian
cities and one teacher from Singapore. They all came in with various subject expertise. Hence,
we decided to choose a lesson that was focused in primary school because we felt that all of us
would be able to contribute in terms of basic subject matter). Due to the pandemic, we did it
virtually using Google classroom and the two taught lessons of the two cycles were uploaded
on a YouTube channel, which we all then were able to view because obviously we couldn’t bephysically present in the class. We did this by meeting once a month for six months last year,
actually between me and November 2021, and we spent a few sessions first understanding thetheory of LS before actually embarking on the actual six-step model of LS.
So, what did we do in the project? And this is where I would take the opportunity to just share
this all with you so that you would be able to hear directly from LS group about theirexperiences and think of these.
(Video) A : I find this study provides a more critical, introspective and retrospective approach
towards teaching methods. It allows for a plurality of perspective as opposed to traditionallyrigid autocratic vision. It tends to review one’s role in the entire classroom scenario, leading toa more enlightened shift from the mere dissemination of knowledge to the facilitation of student
guided learning. Lesson study allows for a revised perception of one’s lesson as a work inprogress, rather than a climactic summation of a set of finite content.
(Video) B : The realization that I had as a positive collaboration. The truly lesson study cycle,
where I think, the group engaged in a very focused and systematic discussions, brought to us
the fact that even the absence of the so-called expert who was teaching us and telling us, youknow, valuable information, we could gain a lot through each other’s experience, ideas, insights.
(Video) C :It was a great experience for me to learn and unlearn, take up the challenge, as

we did a lesson study on math. The topic was fraction. And I was chosen to do that. It was oneof the practical approaches that I have taken into the class. And students were enjoying thesessions that I did.

― 25 ―

OK, so that was a bit about what our group did and experienced during lesson study last year.
Now, what were the achievements of the project? I did ask our lesson study group, what were
their thoughts about professional development, before we embarked on lesson study, and thenI did ask them, what were their thoughts about lesson study midway after the third or fourth
meeting. And finally, after lesson study, I asked them to reflect on the LS experience again.
And broadly, I could see a shift in these three themes or in these three areas. Where lesson
planning was concerned, there was a shift from this belief that earlier, you know, lesson
planning was a very unique process or a highly pre-planned process and the result of one’s
individual effort. Midway through the project, we realized that LS offers an opportunity for amore collaborative and a sort of multiplicity of perspectives and your lesson plan can really bea work in progress. It’s not fixed in stone. And after LS, the key takeaway was that lesson
planning is cyclical. It’s iterative. It’s very fluid, and it leads to a deconstruction andreconstruction of the lesson.
Where professional development was concerned, before LS, by the large the thought process
was that professional development is limited. It’s also very fear-based because it can be quite
competitive and there are blanket approaches to CPD. Midway, a group felt that LS has a great
potential for openness amongst teachers, but there was still a sense of skepticism because there
was a feeling that it requires immense support, support from people around them in their own
institution, from their heads and their colleagues. And after the LS cycle, whilst there wasdefinitely a sense that LS can improve one’s own knowledge base and improve pedagogicalknowledge and subject knowledge, it is highly dependent on institutional culture. There has tobe an institutional culture LS for this to really percolate and commit to it. Finally, as far as
personal growth is concerned, before LS, the teacher was seen as a disseminator of knowledge
and she took her skills for granted, whereas midway and after LS, it helped to understand thatthe teacher is also a learner in the process for constructing knowledge with her learners, and it
helps to challenge one’s own traditional assumptions of teaching.
So it was a novel experience where it helped to draw the teacher’s professional identity and her
personal identity, which seemed to be mutually reinforcing categories and not to separate
categories. Therefore I would say that the highlights of LS is that it leads to a certain shift froman egocentric to a more egocentric form of dialog, which is what Otto Scharmer also says in
his four fields of generative dialogue, Before LS, we found that the group felt that professional― 26 ―

development was more top-down or it was very competitive or ear-based, so people would justbe polite or cautious or tread with apprehension. But LS offered a sort of opportunity forreflective dialogue where teachers saw that, “No, I can change my point of view. This is an
iterative process. I can bring in my ideas and I can learn from others as well. And this left themwith the idea about the potential of LS, which perhaps through many cycles we may be able tosee LS can really lead to a generative dialogue, even shifting from reflective to more generative
dialogues.
What are some of the challenges that would be encountered by localizing LS? One was thatsustaining LS in under-resourced contexts would mean a tremendous commitment of time,energy and resources. And these are significant investments when you consider the diverse
nature of the Indian educational landscape. Secondly, Indian schools are very cultural
institutions and they are hierarchical, they are very formal, and they tend to be complianceoriented and therefore LS requires a lot of buy-in and acceptance from everybody around for
it to really take off, so to speak. And finally, it needs to have a great amount of institutional
support because it’s difficult to attain both individual drive and institutional support
simultaneously as teachers do not tend to really operate in communities of practice. That idea
has not yet penetrated deep enough in the Indian context. So I conclude with thinking about
the fact that LS offers opportunities for continuity and change in the teacher’s own personal
and professional growth because she’s constantly teaching and learning from others. It helps toflatten hierarchies and therefore can be considered as an alternative approach to CPD, which
has traditionally been a top-down. But as a bottom up approach, there’s less transmission loss
because the teacher’s naturally involved in the whole process. But of course, it requires a longterm vision, and I think that if we have a lot of success stories, they will help in pushing for
advocacy of LS as another of CPD experience that we can offer to teachers. We should also be
open to the idea of adapting and modifying LS to suit the Indian context. So where we findchallenges in terms of resources or investments or buy-in, we have to think about how we canadapt it and make it work in the Indian context. With that, thank you once again for thisopportunity to learn from all of you, as well as to present our experience of LS in India. Thankyou.

― 27 ―

Indira SubramanianNational Institute of Education, NTU, Singapore

11

Why did I decide to localize Lesson Study in own context?
What is the value of Lesson Study that I discovered?

What did we do in the project?
What were the achievements of our project?

2― 28 ―

2

Professional Identify of Indian teachers

Present CPD approaches

Lack voice and agency (Batra, 2010)

Tend to be top down in its approach

Balancing act between government regulationand policy directed child centered assessment

Victim of neo liberal shift in policy with emphasis
on efficiency markers and external evaluation
Lack motivation and professional self esteem(Ramachandran, 2018)

Lack a consultative approach

Do not consider teachers as genuine andknowledgeable practitioners (Brinkmann, 2015)
Large scale, sporadic, and not need specificDifficult to measure in terms of impact

3

3

Offers a participatory model of CPD with the teachers’
contribution in selection of the problem

Systematic, structured, and situated in teacher’scontext

Opportunity to build teacher knowledge base throughtheory and practice

Addresses practical problems in the classroom andtherefore has an impact on student learning

4

Potential for personalised community of practiceleading to personal growth of the teacher― 29 ―

4

Government

Require government authority permission;
generally CPD is conducted by government
authorities

Aided

Private

•
•
•
•
5

5

6

― 30 ―

6

7

7

ThemesStage 1 (Before LS)

Stage 2 (Mid point – during LS)

Stage 3 (After the LS cycle)

Professional
Development

Limited, fear based,competitive, inhibiting,blanket approaches

LS has potential for openness
among teachers but requires
immense support (Sceptical)

Can improve pedagogical andsubject knowledge, action
research

Lesson Planning

Personal Growth

Pre planned, unique andpermanent, resultant of
personal effort

Teacher as a disseminatorof knowledge, took skills
for granted

Collaborative and can havemultiple approaches, work inprogress

Problem solving approach

Teacher is a learner herself

Cyclical, iterative and fluid in
possibilities
Deconstruction andreconstruction of the lesson

Dependent on institutional
cultureChallenging one’s traditional
assumptions of teaching8― 31 ―

89

9Potential of LS

Glimpses from LS

Pre LS
Four fields of generative dialogue (Scharmer, 2003)10― 32 ―

10

11

11

1. Continuity and Change• Positive experience
resulting in growth andtransformation• Experiencing
vulnerability• Detaching teacher fromteaching and learning

2. LS as a Bottom Up CPD
Approach

3. Sustaining theexperience of LS• Direct Experience• Requires long term vision• Lesser transmission loss
as compared to cascade
models• Success stories andadvocacy• Flattening Hierarchies• Institutional and systemic
reform• Adaptation andmodification for greatercontextualization

12― 33 ―

12Chapter 4.
Lesson Study in Local Context: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies in Focus
Kaycee Rogers(University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)OK, great. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you again to everyone, to Dr. Kim and to
Dean Matsumi, to Dr. Kusahara and then to Dr. Lewis and Dr. Lee, who will be providing uswith their comments later, as well as my co-presenters. This has been great, I know lesson study
as a model of professional development. But the way that we’ve been able to participate inlearning about lesson study and then enacting it and ultimately presenting our work has also
been a really great model of professional development as teacher educators. So I reallyappreciate being invited back this year. So a little bit about me and why lesson study is part of
who I am and what I do. I was a teacher, a K through eighth teacher. I taught elementary school,
as well as Spanish immersion in the United States and abroad in Colombia in South America.
And then I spent the bulk of my time as a teacher teaching English as a Second Language in a
middle school here in Wisconsin. And in all of those contexts, I actually participated in what
are called professional learning communities, where lessos study was one of many protocols
that we could use as teachers to do our own professional development within the context of the
PLCs. And so I had one experience as a fourth grade teacher in Minnesota, where I was part ofa lesson study cycle, and I found it incredibly valuable and useful, especially as it was only mythird year of teaching, so it was a really good experience for me. And then I kind of didn’t hearmuch about it or think much about it again until last year when I saw the call to participate andI thought, yeah. Now I am a teacher educator, so I work with future secondary teachers. They’rein a dual certification program. So they are all doing a content license at the master’s level aswell as an ESL License, and I’m the program coordinator for the ESL portion. And I think thatlesson study has a lot of potential to be used with pre-service teachers. You’ll see as I present,that I have not made much headway in that area, but it’s something I hope to do in the future.
So I was glad to kind of dig back into this practice and think about it in that way.
And then since starting the work with PELSTE as well, I have become a doctoral student, so
I’ve currently started my second semester of PhD study here at University of Wisconsin-― 35 ―

Madison in curriculum and instruction. And I’m really interested in teacher education, as well
as ESL and bilingual education and rural education, which will come in a minute as to what
I’ve been working on this year. I’m a project assistant on a project that my advisor and someother folks from my university are working on, which is a project for rural teachers in
Wisconsin to think about how to teach socio-scientific issues, local issues around conservationor other socio-scientific issues to Latinx English learners in our spaces. And so since context
is really important, something that you should know is that most of our teachers in Wisconsin,
especially in rural spaces, are white, monolingual English speakers. Most of them are actuallyfrom Wisconsin or the Midwest. And so to be working with a group of language learners, most
who speak Spanish, most who have their roots in Mexico or Central America, this is a big areaof professional development for those teachers, and that’s where lesson study comes in.
And so I decided to localize lesson study within that context. So I did leave PELSTE 2021
thinking, how am I going to work with my pre-service teachers and what might I do? But as I
became involved in this project, working with rural teachers across Wisconsin, I pivoted to a
new focus. So our in-service teachers within this project came together for four days in thesummer, all virtually, of course, because they’re across the state. It’s a large state, so they span
driving distances of six to two hours away from each other, but initially within, we worked
with them on providing professional development around culturally responsive and culturally
sustaining pedagogies. And we asked them to develop a research action plan to come up witha question that they wanted to engage with throughout the course of our professional
development. And then after those initial four days in the summer, we planned to work together
once a month about or once every other month, to come together to do additional professional
development based on their needs. What happened after we asked our teachers to develop a
research action plan was that our teachers felt and expressed to me as the person who was
working with them, in particular on the professional development piece, a bit stuck or frozen.
So they hadn’t been asked to do action research in this way in their classrooms recently, andcertainly not the way that that they were interpreting we were asking them. So there was a lotof anxiety around, you’re asking me to do research. What if I don’t do it correctly? Or what if
my data isn’t something that that you all as a research team find valuable? And so I came in tothis situation and said, actually, I have a way that our teachers can continue to engage in
research or action research on their own practices, but can also continue to engage in thisprofessional development. And so our teachers really wanted to focus (and we wanted to― 36 ―

refocus this action research plan) on their actions in the classroom. And so we renamed it theimplementation plan and I came in and said we can use lesson study as the format for thisprofessional learning community. And so one of the main reasons that this felt like a good fit
was because lesson study is reflective and it’s collaborative, and it is focused on improving an
instructor’s teaching with the ultimate focus on student learning. So it still met the goals of our
project for what we were hoping to learn about and provide a service with. But it also gave theteachers more opportunity to feel like they were in control and that it was a manageableendeavor that they were going to work on.
And I was also really interested in this because I left PELSTE 2021 thinking about social justice,thanks to some of the comments, that Agnaldo made and some of our discussion. And inparticular, I thought, well, this might be a way for us to think about how lesson study and social
justice education practices may go hand in hand. And so that’s where we ended up, thinking
about how are we going to work with our teachers to work on culturally sustaining pedagogies,
but have them have a way to kind of engage in a cyclical and iterative process of thinking about
putting culturally sustaining pedagogies and practices into practice and observing them andnoticing them and reflecting upon them and tweaking and changing them and going back to try
again. And so Lesson Study worked really well for that, and I’ll actually, in a minute share theactual slides from the day that we decided to start framing it in that way.
So on to November, so we met for four days in August, and then we got together one time
between August and November, and then November was when we wanted to make this shift.
So at our November professional development session, we focused on lesson study. It was a
two hour professional development session, and we had one hour focused on lesson study andgetting teachers into breakout rooms and taking that action plan that they had tried to start andreally reforming it into what we called an implementation plan. And then the second half ofthat particular professional development was around utilizing community human resources orfolks in our community who might support our culturally sustaining teaching. So as a group,
we read Chapter 9 from Vicki Collette’s Collaborative Lesson Study, which is around culturally
responsive lessons that have cultural connections. And we reflected on a prompt. So we werethinking about how student identities and their backgrounds as learners would influence theactions and the decisions that we make in our lessons, in our planning and then also in practice.
I gave a really short overview of lesson study and then teachers had a chance to share the― 37 ―

strategies that they had already been working on. So I’ll show you in a minute, kind of like
where we entered into the process because we entered in a little bit late, I think, but thencollaboratively kind of working through the next steps in the process. We are still very muchin the middle of this project. Our next meeting is February 9th. So this week we’ll be seeing
how things are going for our participants. And then after this week, we’ll continue on into thenext steps so I can just share with you where we are right now.
So you can see at the bottom of the screen our slides are a little different. So these are the actual
slides that we used from that session in November. PLACE is just the name, an acronym forthe department at University of Wisconsin that’s supporting this work. So we started out, I sent
this chapter around collaborative lesson study and culturally responsive teaching and lesson
study to our teachers ahead of time and they read it. And so we started in after introductions
with just some breakout groups and some conversation around student identities andbackgrounds and how that influences our teaching. Then I shared a little bit about lesson study.
I let them know that it’s reflective and collaborative, and that our interest in particular was
thinking about social justice, education and increasing educational equity through the types ofprofessional development that teachers become engaged in, and then talked about my own
experience as part of a PLC or professional learning community. And then let them know that
there has there have been many studies and articles and lots of research about lesson study,
improving teachers content and pedagogical knowledge, so working on getting that buy-in fromthe teachers.
I pulled some resources, both from EVRI and actually, I think, from some of the work related
to the center that Dr. Mills works in and we actually use these to locate ourselves. So we said,
all right, well, we’ve kind of already started, so where do we think we are? And so we knew
we already had a study group because we had a group of teachers who were working together,
who had a common goal for improving their practice. And we had also already had pre-lesson
meetings because we had thought through some practices and teachers had already chosen areasthat they wanted to improve or practices that they wanted to try. So we figured we were prettymuch around step three that by this point, there had been some implementation. And within
this cycle that we were kind of around the reflection stage and thinking about how to revisionand re-teach, so we considered our timing together as kind of a implementation stage and thereflection stage that was a little bit messy at the time. And I think that when we think about― 38 ―

localizing in context, I think that’s one of the pieces that stood out to me is that because thisdid develop so organically with a group of teachers who were already working together, itdefinitely looks different than it would have if we would have decided that this is what we weregoing to do from the beginning. So we talked through the steps. We located ourselves. We kindof got the scope of where we were hoping to go. Teachers shared what data they had so far,what observations they had so far from some of the activities and practices that they were trying.
Similar to a post lesson meeting, they gave each other feedback and reflections. They asked
each other questions and then they decided to revision or reconfigure and decide on next steps.
So these are the questions that we use to help them locate themselves within the process andthen our plan wants to meet them January, but actually it got pushed to next for this coming
week. So when we get together this week, our teachers will have a chance to share what they
have put into practice since the last time that we met together based on the feedback and thequestions and the revisionings that took place in November. And then they’ll be bringing in
new data points, new observations, potential pivots that they want to make based on where theyare. And then we just ask them, you know, thinking of this as a lesson study planning session,
how did it go? And because we’ve jumped in completely and fully with both feet, what needs
or supports did you identify? So I followed up with the teachers to support them as they
identified things that they wanted more information about.
So as far as achievements and challenges, one of the things that I haven’t really talked about
yet, but I really appreciated Indira’s comments around the professional identity of Indianteachers or teachers in India, and the lack of voice and agency. Because right now in the UnitedStates, teachers are also having a professional identity… I would say a bit of a crisis, and feelingthe lack of voice and agency. This is related to COVID-19 and the pandemic and schools, andI’m sure this is true globally, but schools really being a place where conflict is visible based onwhether folks are pushing to have students in schools face-to-face, whether folks are pushing
to have students in virtual settings, or whatevert it might be. And so they’re feeling that. At thesame time, there’s also a cultural conflict happening. So extremely recently, local school boards
are passing laws, no not laws, but policies related to what teachers are allowed to teach,
especially related to the things that we’re talking about in our professional development aroundculturally responsive teaching. And so I can talk more about that at a different time. But
certainly the teachers that we are working with are feeling a lot of stress, the feeling of lack of― 39 ―

agency, feeling a crisis of professional identity. And so one of the things that needs to happenis the need for facilitators to build a culture of trust before teachers want to open up theirteaching practices in classrooms.
So I had actually brought up with our teachers to see if they were interested in videotaping andthen sharing and posting their lessons. And at that point, teachers were not feeling that that was
something that they wanted to do. They were happy to share the lessons with us. They were
happy to share their own notes about what happened and their own observations and any dataand student work. But as far as allowing access to their classrooms, especially in a virtual way.
So many of the teachers expressed like, yes, if you could come and observe or we could all get
together and observe each other, that would be great. But there was this reticence to actually
be videotaped and to send your video. And so one of the things that we’re thinking about ishow, with lesson study before getting to the point of actually observing and especiallyobserving virtually, which has just a different level of trust that’s needed, how to build that
culture of trust. So that certainly is a challenge that we are navigating right now.
I think one of the things that’s really interesting is that the focus with our group and perhaps
this is an achievement, it is my eyes, is that the focus with our group is pedagogical. So wehave cross-content teachers. We have cross-context teachers across Wisconsin who are in very
different situations, but we’ve actually been able to think about equity and social justice focus,
culturally responsive, culturally sustaining pedagogies and place-based education. And so I hadtalked about this a little bit in our planning meeting. We shifted the focus from pedagogicalcontent knowledge because we had such a diverse group of teachers to really thinking about
equity and social justice practices. And so they’ve been able to serve as thought partners foreach other in that way. And then also another achievement is that it’s ongoing and it’s cyclicaland iterative. So teachers are giving feedback to each other, trying new things out, and they’rereally invested in each other’s success, which I think is a really great outcome of what this is,
especially at a time when teachers, particularly here, are feeling the need for more support.
So looking ahead, this current project is continuing. We’re actually hoping to move into year
two, which is going to be really exciting and hopefully allow us to actually do the observation
portions and pieces of lesson study. I hope to continue to study the possibilities of lesson study
as a component of pre-service teacher education, with the future teachers that I work with. But― 40 ―

one of the things I’m really excited about, and I think this is perhaps one positive piece of being
forced to meet remotely, is to think about what that study could do as professional development
for geographically isolated teachers. So our teachers are in rural Wisconsin. And I think, as I
already mentioned, they are generally fairly far away from cities where they might be able togather for this kind of work, but also geographically isolated in that they might, as was in mycase, be the only ESL teacher in their district or the only bilingual teacher in the district. And
so I’m really excited to think about what we have already done as far as connecting theseteachers in a collaborative way, for professional development. But what this might look like asa model then for geographically isolated teachers anywhere to connect and participate in a
professional development that is based in their context that still allows them to connect withother teachers and participate in this process collaboratively, so I’m really excited about whatthat could mean. So thank you again for this opportunity. I am really excited to hear from our
discussants. And happy to answer questions in the chat or wait until the Q&A.

― 41 ―EVRI-HU PELSTE 2022 Localizing Lesson Study:
The Cases of America, Brazil and India
Kaycee Rogers, Teaching Faculty
UW Madison, Wisconsin, United States

1

1

Who am I? What is Lesson Study to me?
● Teacher: K-8, Elementary, Spanish Immersion,
English as a Second Language, Spanish○○

Colombia, South America
United States: Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin● Teacher Educator: Secondary ESL○○

Instructor, Supervisor, Program Coordinator
Previously: Elementary Ed, Special Education● Doctoral Student: Curriculum and Instruction○○○○

Teacher Education
ESL/Bilingual Education
Rural Education
Project Assistant: Teaching Local Socio-Scientific Issues toLatinx English Learners

2― 42 ―

2

Why did you decide to localize lesson study in your own
context? What is the value of the lesson study that you
discovered?

● I left PELSTE 2021 with a focus on what could be done in my pre-service teacher
education program…but I pivoted to a new focus.
● In-service teachers participating in Professional Development○○○

Initially developed as a research action plan
Wanted to focus the plan on actions in the classroom, renamed implementation plan
Chose Lesson Study as the format for professional learning community● Lesson Study is a reflective and collaborative process to improve an instructor’steaching and student learning by focusing on students’ thinking and evidence oflearning through observation● Lesson Study can be a method of professional development centered in social
justice education by increasing education equity for all students through teacher
professional development.

3

3What is the context of your lesson study project?
● Rural teachers across the state of Wisconsin, secondary and elementary● Professional Development focused on culturally sustaining pedagogies for
Latinx students● 4 Day Summer PD workshop● Bi-Monthly PD session meetings for one year
● Lesson Study in an adapted form: slides that follow are from our November
session4― 43 ―

4

What did you and the participants do in the project?
● Our November professional development session focused on Lesson Studyas part of an implementation plan.
● After reading Ch. 9 from Vicki Collet’s Collaborative Lesson Study, we
reflected on the following prompt: How have students identities andbackgrounds as learners shaped a lesson you have taught or observed?
● I gave a short overview of Lesson Study (slides to follow).
● Teachers shared the strategies they had been working on, and collaboratively
worked through next steps in the process.
● Next meeting is February 9th, this process is still ongoing!

55

NEW RESOURCESLESSON STUDY
After reading Ch. 9 from Vicki Collet’s Collaborative Lesson
Study, reflect: How have students identities and backgrounds
as learners shaped a lesson you have taught or observed?

6― 44 ―

6

What is Lesson Study
Lesson Study is a reflective and collaborative process to improve an instructor’steaching and student learning by focusing on students’ thinking and evidence oflearning through observation.
○○○

We are interested in Lesson Study as a method of professional development centered in social
justice education by increasing education equity for all students through teacher professional
development.
Primarily used in in-service teacher professional development, as part of the Professional Learning
Community structure.
It is known that Lesson Study can improve teachers’ content and pedagogical knowledge,
confidence, collegiality, and collaboration (Groth et al, 2020).

7

7

Lesson Study Steps

8― 45 ―

8

PLANNING TIME
Share about how your implementation plan is going in terms of implementing CSP:
1. What have you been able to try out or implement since the last time we met?
2. What data do you have and what is it telling you?
3. What might you do before we meet in January?
a. Next steps?
b. New data points?
c. Pivots?

99

REFLECTING● How did the planning session go?
● What needs/supports did you identify?

10― 46 ―

10

Localized Context Findings: What were the achievementsof your project? What kinds of challenges that you
encountered while localizing lessons study in your context?
❏ In current US context, teachers need support and researchers/facilitatorsneed to build a culture of trust before teachers want to open up theirteachings/practices/classrooms❏ The focus (with our group) is pedagogical, because we have cross-content
and cross-contextual❏ Equity and social justice focused, culturally responsive and culturally sustaining pedagogies,
place based education❏ Ongoing, cyclical, iterative process

11

11

Looking Ahead*Continue current project, and move into year two!
In the future, I hope to continue to study the possibilities of:● Lesson Study as a component of pre-service teacher education● Remote and collaborative lesson study as professional development for
geographically isolated teachers

12― 47 ―

12

Thank you for this opportunity!
Any questions or comments?
Contact Information:
Kaycee Rogers
ESL Program Coordinator, Secondary Education Program
Doctoral Student
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Department of Curriculum and Instruction
krogers23@wisc.edu@MrsKcdRogers

13

13

References
Collett, V. (2019). Chapter 9 Supporting Responsiveness. In Collaborative Lesson Study. New
York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Collett, V. (2021, December 29). How The Lesson Study Approach Can Improve Your Teaching.
Retrieved from https://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/improve-your-teaching/
OKAMURA, M., KIMURA, H., TANAHASHI, K., YOSHIDA, N., MARUYAMA, Y., KOYAMA, M., . . .
TAKESHITA, S. (2020). Lesson Study Manual for Teacher Educators: International Edition.
Bulletin of the EVRI Research Project, 3. doi:10.15027/49798*All graphics used in this presentation were licensed for Creative Commons, or otherwise citedthrough references above*14― 48 ―

14

PART II

Discussion: The Achievements and Challenges ofLocalizing Lesson Study

Chapter 5.
Learning from Lesson Study Around the World
Catherine Lewis(Mills University, USA)I would like to thank all three participants for their wonderful presentations. I will first makebrief remarks about each presentation and then make some final remarks. Agnaldo talked about
two contexts in Brazil: an undergraduate course where he inserted observation into initialteacher training of chemistry teachers; and a program for in-service teachers, a 180-hour
improvement program on digital technologies. One takeaway from his work is that theobservational focus on student learning can shift teachers away from a focus on transmissionof content, helping teachers use observation as a time for reflection and rethinking of
instruction, not just for evaluation. I was also impressed by the fact that in-service teachers
requested a continuing group to share experiences. His quote, “What motivates me most is thesense of community in lesson study” gets at the heart of what will nurture and sustain lesson
study.
Indira’s reported on her work with a group of six teachers in three Indian cities and Singapore
using virtual lesson study with Google Classroom and YouTube. They met once a month forsix months, and I think two really interesting takeaways from the video were (1) the shift fromteaching as dissemination of knowledge towards teaching as facilitation of student learning;and (2) thinking about a lesson as a work in progress, not something that’s done when it’s done.
A teacher once said to me, “Before lesson study, when a lesson was finished, I was finishedwith the lesson. Now I just keep thinking about it.” Additional takeaways from her work arethat teachers discover the power of collaboration (a lesson isn’t just your own thing, you cancreate it together) the power of observing students (even in the absence of outside experts) andthe idea that the teacher is also a learner. So again, I think these are really core lesson study
ideas, and I was so happy to see them in these brief projects coming up. Her takeaways about
what would sustain lesson study were also interesting: long term vision with buy-in andresources, institutional reforms (since the current top-down structure makes it hard to support
teacher’s individual drive), success stories and advocacy that might be inspiring (to help otherteachers learn from examples and build the same thing), and adaptations and context for the― 51 ―

local context.
I was very happy to hear Kaycee’s interesting presentation on rural teachers, both elementaryand secondary. She made the interesting point that when you have teachers teaching different
grade levels and different subjects, it is difficult to find a shared them. In her case, they foundthe powerful theme of culturally sustaining pedagogy for Latinx students. And it sounds likeshe found a theme that really worked for all these teachers across grade levels, and that’s alesson we can take to other places. Her work used the structure of a four-day summer workshop
and bimonthly PD for one year. The question how do students’ identities and backgrounds aslearners shape a lesson you have taught or observed is a very powerful question that invites
teachers to start by sharing what they know. Sharing what we know and hearing what otherteachers know is a very powerful way to support teachers’ leadership of work, as well as tobegin the sharing of knowledge. One of the interesting things I noted in Kaycee’s presentation
was that she had had experience herself with lesson study; although she had a good experience
with lesson study, it was discontinued. And this highlights a really big issue we have in the
United States and probably other places. Unless professional learning is institutionalized,
unless schools and districts have routines to support it, it will not last. This happens often with
grant-supported lesson study. That’s a big challenge we all face. Kaycee made the interesting
point that, when teachers are told to do research, it can be an intimidating thing, but that lesson
study makes it manageable because it focuses on something that’s meaningful and importantto teachers. Her idea that you need to build a culture of trust before teachers want to open up
their teaching practices, particularly in terms of online video sharing, I’d really like to comeback to that. So what are the things we can share, the little moments that do build teachers’
trust? And how can we kind of accumulate those and make sure they’re happening in all of our
projects? I was very inspired by her comment at the end, that teachers are invested in eachother’s success. That’s one of the underlying things we’re trying to accomplish with lesson
study that is going to lead to its longevity and spread.
I’d like to make a few additional comments based on my experience of about 20 years withlesson study. Lesson study is often described by its surface features—things like planning,observing and discussing a lesson. But really, what’s important about lesson study is not somuch the surface features, but whether those surface features create changes—changes inteachers’ beliefs and dispositions, changes in teachers’ sense of agency, their sense of power as― 52 ―

learners, changes in the collegial learning culture, like the trust that several people mentioned.
For example, do teachers become more invested in each other’s success, and are there changes
in their knowledge—their knowledge about content, about pedagogy, aboiut student thinking.
So the important question is not are we doing those surface features of lesson study the same
way they’re doing them in Japan, but are we doing them in ways (perhaps modified fromJapanese practice) that will build these sort of underlying important characteristics?
And I’ve used in the past the example of other imports from Japan, like sushi. There are sushi
like California rolls that were invented in the United States and re-imported to Japan andeveryone agrees they are really delicious adaptations. But when my son was in third grade andwe were living in Japan, he invented with a friend, peanut butter sushi, which I think everyone,
except for him at the time, agreed was not a very good adaptation. So how do we tell the
California rolls from the peanut butter sushi. These underlying principles allow us to look awhether lesson study is building knowledge, trust, beliefs that support improvement. Is it
building these things? If so, it’s probably a good adaptation. What is really important about
lesson study may not be the surface features (writing a lesson plan, observing a lesson) but thechanges in knowledge, relationships, identities and so on. Further ideas and reflection tools to
consider lesson study quality can be found at https://lessonresearch.net/teacherlearning/overview/.
I would like to close by telling a story that I think is hopeful, but also raises some of the sameproblems that the three presentations of raised. I’ve had the privilege of working for the last
five years in a lesson study project that’s created school-wide lesson study at a small numberof US sites. And school-wide lesson study has allowed us to solve a problem that U.S. educators
have struggled with for 40 years—how to reshape mathematics instruction so that it isproblem—solving centered and actively led by students. We have had that vision for 40 years,
but we haven’t been able to achieve it. But school-wide lesson study allows us to achieve thatvision; you can see an example at https://lessonresearch.net/john-muir-elementary/overview/.
Lesson study is a routine for teacher learning and it needs a powerful vision for student learning
to go with it. I’m not saying that you should introduce the vision for student learning fromabove, but gradually create a demand for that vision. And in the case of the school-wide lesson
study in mathematics, we gradually made available to teachers a Japanese strategy of teaching
through problem-solving, and we didn’t force them, but we made examples available, and over

― 53 ―

time, gradually people drew on those examples. (See https://lessonresearch.net/teachingproblem-solving/overview). Teachers must drive change. Teachers’ questions and needs must
be the central drivers of the work, not top-down directives. Outside experts can play a crucialrole by encouraging teachers, noticing what’s really valuable in their work and bringing in ideasthat help them build on it.
So, the kinds of lessons we’ve learned are things like go slow, allow educators to lead the work,and reconnect educators with their authentic long term goals (through building a research theme
https://lessonresearch.net/study-step/develop-research-theme/). Attend not just to the visible
elements of lesson study, but also to the invisible elements like teacher agency and identity.
Going public, sharing your work across schools and districts, spurs additional improvement
and you’ve all done that today. You can see an example of a successful school-wide lesson
study site online, (https://lessonresearch.net/john-muir-elementary/overview)—a school
serving low-income students, many of them English language learners. They developed a
research theme by thinking about what are the qualities they hope their students will have 5 to
10 years from now? And then you can see the rest of the process at the link above for the
research theme. They developed a research theme of independent, self-confident learners they
thought about that’s what they really wanted for their students. And then they thought about
how can we teach math in ways that help students become independent, self-confident learners?
And they taught research lessons in which students shared their thinking and students’ ideas
drove instruction, and in order to do that, they really needed to make students thinking visible.
The school-wide lesson study started in 2016, and you can see their dramatic impact on student
mathematics learning (SBAC) compared with the district as a whole, which has much moreprivileged students.

― 54 ―

I’d like to close with a few quotes.
Lesson study is just as much a state of mind as it is a practice, a desire to learn fromothers, a desire to continue growing your practice, a sense of responsibility within
the community to support and encourage one another’s growth.
And I think we heard some of the beginnings of that in all of your presentations. So I think thechallenge for all of us is to think about how do we keep nurturing that kind of mentality? And
I have to say that I am really in the same place you are. Although several schools across several
districts have made stunning changes in teacher learning routines and student learning andteachers in these schools are now continuing school-wide lesson study without any support
from the outside, yet it hasn’t changed the district environments they’re in, so that I’m sort ofconfronting the same problem that you all are. And I think one thing we can all do to solve it
is join organizations like WALS (World Association of Lesson Study) to share knowledge. It’s
meeting in Kuala Lumpur in September 2022. And you can find additional information onlesson study at www.lessonresearch.net.

― 55 ―

Localizing Lesson Study: The Cases of America, Brazil &India
PELSTE 2022

Catherine Lewis
Mills College, USA, February 5, 2022

www.lessonresearch.net

1

1

Brazil, Agnaldo Arroio
Two Contexts
 Undergraduate course: inserted observation into initialteacher training of chemistry teachers In-service teachers: 180 hour improvement program on digitaltechnologies for initial grades of elementary2― 56 ―

2

Brazil, Agnaldo Arroio: My Take-aways
 Observation focus on student learning can shift teachers awayfrom focus on transmission of content and help teachers see
observation as for reflection and rethinking on instruction (notjust evaluation)
 Inservice teachers requested continuing group to shareexperiences. “What motivates me most is the sense ofcommunity in Lesson Study”

33

India/Singapore, Indira Subramanian 6 teachers in 3 Indian cities (Bangalore, Ranipet, Kolkata) &Singapore Virtual LS using google classroom and you tube
 Once/month for six months

4― 57 ―

4

Takeaways from video
 Shift from teaching as dissemination of knowledge
 Lesson as work in progress Power of collaboration
 Power of observing students, even in absence of outside
expert Teacher is also a learner5

5

Takeaways
 What will sustain LS: Long-term vision—buy-in and resources
 Institutional reform-hard to support individual drive Success stories and advocacy
 Adaptation for context

6― 58 ―

6

U.S., Kaycee Rogers
 Rural teachers, elementary and secondary Culturally sustaining pedagogies for Latinx students
 4-day summer workshop, bi-monthly PD for 1 year How have students identities and backgrounds as learners
shaped a lesson you have taught or observed?

7

7

U.S., Kaycee Rogers: Takeaways
 Own experience of LS was good, but not continued
 “Research” can be intimidating focus, but LS is manageable Build culture of trust before teachers want to open up theirteaching/practices/classrooms
 Pedagogical focus, because cross-content and cross-context
 Equity and social justice, culturally responsive and sustaining
pedagogies

 Teachers are invested in each other’s success!

8― 59 ―

8

Lesson Study is Often Described by
Surface Features
Team of 3-6 educators
Cycles of inquiry with a live
“research lesson” at the heart“School-wide Lesson Study” allows
teams throughout a school to workon the shared school vision,
expressed in a “Research Theme”

9

But Underlying Changes Are More Important

9

From lessonresearch.net
https://lessonresearch.net/teacher-learning/growthdimensions/10― 60 ―

10

Attend to What Supports the Core Routines

Wheatley, M., & Dalmau, T. (1983) Below the Green Line or the 6 Circle Model (unpublished)
11

Closer Look at the Bottom: Invisible helpers (orbarriers) toward organizational improvement

11

Information

How and what informationis shared and utilized

Relationships

How stakeholders are valued,
respected and connected to one
another

Identity

How a shared andindividual sense of purpose
is nurtured

Wheatley, M., & Dalmau, T. (1983) Below the Green Line or the 6 Circle Model (unpublished)12― 61 ―

12

Why is Lesson Study Useful?
 Teachers think together about their long-term goals Teachers learn to carefully observe students
 Teachers see lessons through eyes of students
 Teachers build teamwork and trust with each other Teachers feel collective agency: we can experiment and solve
problems together
 Teachers invite outside expertise, rather than just receiving it

13

13

https://lessonresearch.net/teacher-learning/growthdimensions/14― 62 ―

14

School-wide Lesson Study Has solved a problem that could not be solved for 40 years in
the US: Excellent, equitable mathematics
 Problem-solving centered mathematics, actively led by
students has been a vision in the US for 40 years, but only
recently have some schools achieved it You can see their instruction
https://lessonresearch.net/teaching-problem-solving/ttp-inaction/

15

15

What have we learned about designing forschool-wide Lesson Study?
 Join Lesson Study (a teacher learning routine) with powerful
instructional vision (like tokkatsu)
 Teachers drive change; teachers’ questions and needs must be
central drivers of the work Outside experts can play a crucial role by suggesting resources tostudy, reviewing lesson plan drafts, providing final comments on
research lessons–but they should be invited by teachers, notimposed16― 63 ―

16

What have we learned about designing forschool-wide Lesson Study?
 Go slow: Lesson Study grew and instruction changed gradually, as
teachers saw benefits, not through an initial master plan
 Reconnect educators with their authentic long-term goals
 Attend not just to visible elements (e.g. Steering Committee) but
also invisible elements (e.g., teacher agency, identity)
 Share emerging knowledge across classrooms (in between Lesson
Study cycles) Go public: Sharing across schools and districts (and countries!)
spurred added improvement (public lessons)17

Lesson Study Case:John Muir Elementary School, San Francisco

1784% low-income; 42% English learners; 97%
students of color; 16% homeless18― 64 ―

18 Think about your students 5-10 years from now. What are thequalities you hope they will have?
 See the rest of the process at link below

https://lessonresearch.net/study-step/developresearch-theme/
19

19

Vision: Research Theme“…Independent, self-confident learners.” (Muir School)20― 65 ―

20

Bring the Research Theme to Life
At Muir, teachers supported independent, confident learners by Having students try to solve problems themselves first, andexplain it, rather than following teacher’s model Building norms to support student-led discussion of studentwork Teachers’ study helped them identify these ideas

21

Experiment: Try Research Lessons
Centered on Students’ Presenting Their Ideas

21

22― 66 ―

22

Board Makes Student Thinking Visible

23

Colleagues and Outside Specialists Observe,
Discuss

23

24― 67 ―

24

Muir’s work on “Confident, Independent
Learners” Increased Mathematics Learning

Muir Mathematics Standardized Test Scores; Lesson Study Started 2015-16
25

25“Lesson study is just as much astate of mind as it is a practice. It’sa desire to learn from others andthose more experienced, a desire
to continue growing in yourpractice, a sense of responsibility
within the community to supportand encourage one another’s
growth.”A San Francisco teacher

26― 68 ―

26

Next Steps?
Join WALS (World
Association of Lesson
Studies)
www.Walsnet.org
Attend school visitsor share your ideas
at WALS annual
conference

Kuala Lumpur
Sept. 20-22, 2022

Tools to support School-wide Lesson
Study are available free online atwww.lessonresearch.net, including
resources on School-wide Lesson Study:
https://lessonresearch.net/resources/sc
hoolwide-lesson-study/overview

27

Find all the videos and supporting materials
at:27

www.lessonresearch.net
email: clewis@mills.edu

28― 69 ―

28

The opportunity to focus on two to four students’learning was incredible. You feel like you are in atrue research mode.

Teacher from San Mateo, California

29

29

The focus of observationis on student learning
not on the teaching.

Teacher from San Mateo, California

30― 70 ―

30

Great trust has developed over time thatallows us to be both teachers and learners
with each other. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Lesson Study Communities Team Reflection

31

31― 71 ―

Chapter 6.
Are We Compromising the Core of Lesson Study in Local Adaptations inCountries Beyond Japan?
Christine Kim Eng Lee(National Institute of Education, Singapore)First of all, I want to thank Hiroshima University colleagues for inviting me as a discussant at
this symposium. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. It’s really very late for someof us and very early for some of you. Thank you for being at this symposium. I must say thatI’m very inspired by the three presenters. I’m inspired by your passion in lesson study and yourmotivation. When you saw its usefulness, you want to use it in your work with teachers.
Catherine Lewis has earlier summarized the key ideas in your presentations. What I’ve done
was to put your key ideas in the form of a table as we explore at this symposium how you
localized lesson study to your contexts: who, what, why and how categories. Catherine has
already shared the contexts of who you worked with, what you were working on, your focus oflesson study and the whys. In the interest of time, I will not go into these same details. She has
also shared the how—the processes in which you did lesson study. For example, in the U.S.,
you had your summer PD followed by bimonthly PD meetings. In Brazil, we saw that you wereusing lesson study with both the pre-service and in-service teachers. In India, you did a formof virtual lesson study across several sites in India including Singapore, and used various
technologies with your teachers in this virtual environment.
It’s wonderful to see that there were some growth and achievements in your lesson study work.
I think for many of us who do lesson study, we know how emotional and draining that work
can be for us as teachers and teacher educators. When we see some growth and development,
it keeps us wanting to go on with the work despite the challenges. We saw that in Kaycee’s
case in the United States how the process was ongoing for her and the teachers. In Brazil, it hasbrought about a sense of community among your teachers. As teachers, we love working ingroups and working with others in communities of practice. But in many schools the reality isthat we often work in isolation within our classrooms. What lesson study affords us are the― 73 ―

collaboration and development of a sense of community among teachers. I’m also very
impressed that our colleague from Brazil focused on observation. I think it’s a very importantpart of our lesson study work. We need to continue to train teachers to observe students in thecontext of what’s happening. As Catherine Lewis has said many times to us—we have the eyes
to see, but we don’t really see. Lesson study develops our eyes to see children. I think this“seeing” of what happens in the classroom is core and important to our lesson study work. The
idea of working with pre-service teachers from the very beginning of their student teachingexperience and helping them to see what’s going on in the classroom is particularly very
important. I’m a deep believer that the only way to do that is to keep on practising yourobservational skills and discussing your observations with others. In the Brazilian case, we also
saw another example of a digital/virtual format of working across teachers in various sites
because of COVID. Even though the teachers are physically distanced, they’re not sociallydistanced and could develop a sense of community. The technology we experienced today has
brought us all over the world together in the same space. We saw in the Brazilian case of how
the in-service teachers were able to share their experiences and foster a virtual community ofpractice. We saw the same thing in the wonderful video that Indira shared with us. Her teachers
reflected on their experience and while they were in different locations, three cities in India andone in Singapore, they were able to collaborate and work together and develop a sense ofcommunity and collaboration across the various sites.
I think the challenges that you shared are the challenges that Catherine and myself faced in ourown work in lesson study in our respective schools in our contexts. One of the things that stoodout very clearly and it will be across many sites all over the world is that lesson study is time
consuming. Teachers find it very difficult to conduct lesson study because they are very busy
with other kinds of work that the school demands of them. Also with the pandemic, teachers’
workload has really increased. Teachers’ well-being has also been affected by the pandemic
and that has really affected their motivation to do lesson study. I think time and teachers’
workload have always been a common problem. The other problem that’s very common across
many of the cases around the world is the need for teacher buy-in. There will always be theskeptics. Often teachers would say, why do you spend so much time talking about just one
lesson. But we know that lesson study is not about just one lesson. It’s about sharing our
educational vision. What do we mean about educating our children? What are the long-termgoals for our children?

― 74 ―

Our teachers do need support. In my own experience in Singapore, we have teachers who are
motivated and want to do lesson study. They want to give it the time. But as Indira said, youneed institutional support. The time set aside for teachers to come together as a professional
learning community is very. We need to remove the unnecessary work that teachers do.
Teachers always complain about the unnecessary amount of administration work they have.
How can teachers be spared of such administrative chores? Getting that kind of support fromschool leaders and heads of departments is very important. Teacher motivation and drive alone
are not enough.
As I looked at the three cases presented, I asked myself these questions: What are some aspects
that are common across all your cases? Are there anything that are unique in each case? All of
you worked with in-service experienced teachers. Agnaldo from Brazil worked with preservice students. I share similar sentiments as Kaycee, who said, “I do want to do lesson study
at the pre-service level, but somehow I haven’t been able to do so.” We share the same
experience in Singapore as it’s very difficult for us to lesson study at the pre-service level.
All of you were motivated because you saw a perceived gap in your work and thought lesson
study could be one way to bridge that gap. In India, there was a gap between the professional
identity of teachers and the kinds of CPD that teachers are exposed to. In Kaycee’s case, it was
not so easy for her teachers to think and be engaged in research. Lesson study could provide away for her teachers to think about designing and enacting lessons as a form of teacher research
that’s different from traditional forms of research. In the Brazil case, there was a need to build
the capacity of the teachers to use digital technologies for the 21st century learning.
The foci of the three cases were mainly on pedagogy. Also the lesson study protocol involves
planning just one lesson. Brazil and India did virtual lesson study. Because of the pandemic,
lesson study could no longer be in face-to-face settings but had to move more to online formats.
We need further discussion as to what are the challenges Brazil and India had in doing virtual
lessons study—what worked for you and what did not work for you?
This diagram (see Figure 1) may help us think about what it means to localize lesson study.
There are two kinds of approaches to implementation. I think many of us are familiar with― 75 ―

fidelity implementation. In fidelity implementation, we implement lesson study exactly as
understood and performed in Japan. But even in Japan, lesson study is done differently acrossthe country. There are many variations. One example is Professor Manabu Sato’s School as
Learning Community. In his variation, there is no formal planning among teachers although
informal planning and consultation do occur. One reason Professor Sato gave for notencouraging formal planning is the issue of power relations within lesson study teams.
Beginning teachers are forced to follow what the more experienced teachers say and do. He
focuses mainly on encouraging all teachers in a school to open their classrooms forobservations followed by discussions. In implementing and adapting lesson study to a context
outside of Japan, we borrow the ideas and use a local adaptation approach that allows foradjustment to the practice as long as teachers adhere to its core elements.
But what are the core elements of lesson study? When people tell me that they are doing lesson
study and I asked, what do you do? And then I asked myself, is that really lesson study? I’m
not sure because to me, some of the core elements are missing. The key question we need toaddress at this symposium are: what core features of lesson study have you retained in youradaptation of lesson study in your context and why? When you adapted lesson study, do you
think your adaptation of lesson study reduces somewhat the power of lesson study in achieving
its goals and why? Now that you have experienced lesson study over a year or two, whatchanges would you like to make in your next iteration of lesson study so that the power oflesson study is better achieved and not compromised. Very often in lesson study, we are moreconcerned with the performative aspects of lesson study, the step by step doing of things, theactions. We plan together, we do and we see (plan-do see) cycle. Are we focusing on the
superficial dimensions of lesson study? How do we go underneath that and look at thesubstantive aspects of lesson study—the ostensive aspects in order for it to become routinizedin the culture of schools. These are the three questions that I want to pose to the presenters tothink about during the discussion we’re going to have.
I do have questions for specific countries. For Indira from India, I just wonder why did you
choose three cities in India and Singapore as your lesson study sites. Usually when we startlesson study, we begin with one site because culture building among the teachers and within
the school is important. You also asked this question, “Can I really do lesson study because in
India, we are so under-resourced?” But perhaps a more useful question could be “Is lesson― 76 ―

study something that’s even more powerful for under-resourced countries? Other than seeing
under-resource as a limiting factor, can we see lesson study as a liberating process for yourteachers?” In the video you shared, the process seemed to be liberating for your teachers inspite of limited resources. For Brazil because of my own interest in your work with pre-service
teachers, I like to know how teams among the student teachers were formed and “How did yourstudent teachers respond to it? Were there other teacher educational faculty who were involved?”
I have a specific question for the U.S. “Do you think your meetings that are bimonthly once
every two months adequate? How many meetings do you think you should have in order toharness the power of lesson study?” These are some questions that I have specifically for thethree countries.
When I started lesson study over 10 years ago in Singapore, I realized that in the initial phaseof our experience, we focused on planning one lesson. But over time, we have encouraged ourteachers to come together to focus on the development of a curriculum unit and not just one
lesson. The research lesson is embedded within the curriculum unit. In so doing, we found ourteachers studying the curriculum more closely. In Singapore, our curriculum is a national
curriculum and given to teachers together with textbooks, workbooks, and teachers’ guides.
The teachers follow the curriculum slavishly without thinking more deeply about them. We
want our teachers to think more deeply about the curriculum that they are teaching to ourchildren. Over time, we try to shift our teachers to focus on the improvement of students
learning as they study deeply the subject matter that they will be teaching.
In their lesson study teams, they will ask the following questions: “How can students learn?
What are some difficulties that our students have in their learning? What are somemisconceptions that they have?” We try to encourage our teachers to anticipate student
responses. Teachers found it very difficult to anticipate how student would respond in a lesson
and the kinds of questions that they have. So in the initial stages of lesson study, we too werefocusing on the performative aspects of lesson study routine but over time we are trying to get
our teachers to look at the principles and key ideas behind lesson study: to see lessons study asa research process and developing a research theme. This is a very difficult process—getting
teachers to think deeply as to what the gaps are that they see in their students, asking “What dothey want the students to be like at the end of the year and so on?” We also try to work with
our teachers in Singapore to help them see that lesson study is about developing a shared vision― 77 ―

of education and that it is about observing students and not the teachers.
The key idea that we want to share is that, in trying to make lesson study routinized in schools
outside of Japan, we have to attend to the substantive or ostensive aspects of the lesson study,—the principles and the key ideas of lesson study. On this note, I want to thank you all forsharing your work with us. It’s really been inspiring and interesting. Arigatougozaimasu.

― 78 ―EVRI-HU PELSTE 2022
Localizing Lesson Study:
The Cases of America, Brazil
and India

DiscussantChristine Kim-Eng Lee
Policy, Curriculum, Leadership Acad. Groupchristine.lee@nie.edu.sg

1

Localising Lesson Study: The what & the why

1

UNITED STATESBRAZIL

INDIA

Context

Inservice Rural Teachers

1. ITT chemistry teachers
2. Inservice elementaryteachers

6 primary school teachers (including
researcher) from 3 cities in India andSingapore

Why LS?
Value of LS

Improve instructors’ andSense of Community within
student learning
LS
Increase educational equity
for all students

Focus of LS

Focus on Students thinking& evidence of learning
through observation
Cultural Sustaining
Pedagogies for Latinx
students

Bridge a gap between teachers’
professional identity and current PD
approaches – a novel alternative PD
approach???? Unclear from ppt slides
1. Focus on observing
student learning
Mathematics lesson on fractions
2. Focus on digitaltechnologies because of
Covid pandemic

2
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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2

Localising Lesson Study: The how
ProtocolUNITED STATESBRAZIL

INDIA

1. 4-day summer PD
2. Bi-Monthly PD
meetings for 1 year
3. 6 steps – one
meeting to plan the
research lesson

1. Groups of student teachersplanning and observing
lessons with a focus on
student learning –preparation of observation
scripts
2. 25 teachers in a 180 hr
improvement programme Virtual format

1. Met once a month for 6 months
2. Virtual LS using google classroom
and U-tube channel
3. Theory of LS before experiencing LS

3National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

3

Localising Lesson Study: Achievements

3

UNITED STATESBRAZIL

INDIA

1.

1. ITT programme (a) the change of teachers'
perspectives for planning focusing on student
learning, (b) the perception of the importanceof observing the class without judgment, (c)some degree of sense of community
Inservice programme
2. Inservice programme(a) develop a relevant sense of community; (b)changed their conceptions about theobservation of classes from evaluation to how
observations helped in the reflections andrethinking their classes; (c) improve theirpractices with the use of digital technologies
with their students; (d) more confident andsharing their experiences in teacher groups (e)fostering a virtual community of practices

1. Develop collaboration
2. Multiple approaches to teaching
3. Potential for openness among
teachers
4. Teachers become learners
5. De-construction and reconstruction of lessons
6. Improve pedagogical and subject
knowledge
7. Challenge one’s traditional
assumptions about teaching2.

Opportunities forcross-content andcross-contextual
collaboration
The process is ongoing

4
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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4

Localising Lesson Study: Challenges
Challenges

UNITED STATESBRAZIL

INDIA

Teachers need support
Need to build a cultureof trust before teachers
willing to open lessons

1. Difficult to carry out LS
activities remotely
2. Lack of experience of LS inundergrad courses
3. Increased workload ofteachers because of thepandemic

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Teachers need immense support
Skeptics among teachers
Dependent on institutional culture
Lack of buy in and acceptance
Needs individual drive andinstitutional support
6. Sustaining LS in under-resourced
contexts

5
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

55• LS with in-service teachers• Motivation to improve a
perceived gap• Focus on pedagogy• Plan one lesson• Regularity of meetings withteachers• Positive Experience with LS• Challenges esp. in terms of
support needed• Brazil – LS with preservice teacherstoo• Virtual LS becauseof Covid andgeographicalbarriers (acrosscities/countries)

National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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6

1. What core features of Lesson
Study have you retained in youradaptation of Lesson Study in yourcontexts and why?
2. Do you think your adaptations ofLocal Adaptation
Lesson Study reduced somewhat
the power of Lesson Study inachieving its goals in any way andIn a fidelity approach, lesson study should be
why?
understood and performed as in Japan.
3. What changes would you make in
The local adaptations approach allows foryour next iteration of Lesson
adjustments to the practice as long as
Study?
teachers adhere to its core elements.
Fidelity of
Implementation

7
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

7Specific questions about each case

7

INDIA
• Why did the LS group include 2 countries – 3 cities in India & Singapore? Why choose teachers fromdifferent sites for the study? What are the implications behind this decision?
• What lessons have you learnt about conducting virtual lesson study? What challenges have you
faced?
• In under-resourced India especially in curriculum materials for teachers, do you see lesson study as
a powerful tool in developing locally tested curriculum materials? If so, how can you lesson study
for this purpose?
BRAZIL• What lessons have your learnt about conducting virtual lesson study? What challenges have you
faced?
• How did your student teachers respond to lesson study? How are teams among student teachers
formed? Were other TE faculty also involved?
US• Are the bi-monthly meetings after the 4-day PD adequate? How many meetings and how often do
you think would be needed to help teachers do quality lesson study?
8
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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8

How can Lesson Study be an
embedded practice in schools
outside of Japan?

Developing
Focus on a curriculum unit within which is theresearch lesson (studying the curriculum kyouzai kenkyuu)

Initial
Focus on one lesson
Focus on instructional improvement (Howcan we teach better?)
Focus on performative lesson study routine– plan, do, see (specific actions, by specificpeople in specific places and times)

Focus on improvement of student learning(How can students learn better? Anticipating
student responses)
Focus on ostensive aspects of lesson study –the principles and key ideas behind lesson
study - lesson study as a research process,focusing on a research theme, lesson study asa shared vision of education, observing
students not the teacher etc
9National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

9

SINGAPORE TEACHERS’ REFLECTIONS

9

As a teacher, I learnt that I can no longer assume thatthe students would learn what they were taught. I
became more aware of why at times students grappledwith difficult topics
I have learnt to observe the lesson fromthe lens of a student. By observing what thestudent say and write, their facial
expression and body language, I havegathered some information about how thestudents think and learn.

National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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10

THANK YOU

11

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PART III

Answers to the DiscussantsChapter 7.
Beyond Localizing Lesson Study
Agnaldo Arroio(University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Indira Subramanian(National Institute of Education, Singapore)
Kaycee Rogers(University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)

Arroio : OK. Here we go. Thank you all for all these questions and all the previous presentersbecause we could learn a lot of and also some questions that was point out. I think that support
us to rethink about how to go deeply, to understand it and to adapt it also lesson study for
different contexts. Briefly, I would try to. I think that the main core for my point of view, it was
the observation phase. I knew that the design it’s really important to study, to prepare, but tochange their mentality, their mindset. The observation is a very key step for them because they
can face what they designed, and what happen in it, and how they can realize they could change
to improve the learning of students. I think that the observation is really important. This was
the core that we retain for the lesson study, but also it was a challenge to adapt it for virtual
because the observation when you are in the classroom, you can observe all the students, thewhole class, the interaction, the teacher and students. But when you are doing it virtually, evenif we can put a camera that we can’t guarantee an angle that you can observe the whole class,
you are missing information. You cannot really observe the interaction between students andthe position of camera and also something that we missed during this adaptation, it was because
all day online, the real online transmission, it was based on data package of the teacher. They
paid to do it. They didn’t have the support of the institution to have this Internet access. It was
their own interest their own motivation. And I think that in this sense, we missed it because we
couldn’t have multiple cameras in the classroom to observe different angles, for example. It’s
different when you are in your face. And I think that for change, for the next iteration, I thinkthat is to develop this sense of research because now I think that we are on the way to develop
the sense of community because as some of them as it was previously mentioned,
geographically isolated. Now they have a partner that virtually. They are part of this virtual― 87 ―

community. They can exchange. But I think it is this sense of research to give them theauthorship for the production, this autonomy that should develop with them, could besomething that we need to focus on the next movement that we can adopt for the program,because this sense of community, I would like to point out it’s clear for them, but to be a
researcher for them, it’s something so far away. So this is something that we need to make them
to believe that it’s possible because they are doing actually. I think that I tried to do it in threeminutes, so.
Subramanian :OK. There were lots of questions, but I try I can to respond to the key

questions. But firstly, thank you. Thank you for the summaries and for pointing out what was
relevant in the presentations. . Firstly, in terms of what was the core of LS in my project, I
wanted teachers, I wanted us to experience the six steps. Though it may have been, as waspointed out, initially it seems like a performative routine, but I wanted us to go through it to
see why it works. And through that, it would hopefully lead to a shift in perception about the
deeper meaning of LS. And I hoped that we were able to plant a seed in our minds about that.
And what was perhaps missing or what I would have liked to have incorporated in my LS groupwas, unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to see a lesson in a live situation. And I think that’s
often crucial because there are many important critical incidents that you can see, particularly
when you’re watching a live lesson, but we didn’t have a chance to do that. So hopefully whenthings get better, unless we’re doing an actual non-virtual LS will help us to achieve that. What
we plan to do in our second round of LS in season two, as we call it, is to actually bring in thefocus of the research lesson, which is a student-centered issue or a problem in what they’relearning, but also in alignment with some of the new policy directives, which have just been
introduced last year in India. We have a new education policy, which is a long term vision of
education in India for the next 20 years or so. And we’d like to see what do teachers make senseof it, because again, education policy is always drawn up by experts, policy makers. It may not
be as consultative with teachers. So, in our next version of LS or our next iteration, we want tosee how do teachers interpret the research problem in light of the recommendations of this new
education policy. So that in the sense then, they are getting to contribute to this interpretationor, how this education policy initiative will unfold in their own mind, in their own context, in
their own institutional cultures. And maybe if we just have 20 seconds left? Dr. Christine, why
three cities inIndia and not in one school site? I’ll be very honest with you. It just worked. I
just reached out to people who wanted to be a part of the group, and that was what worked. So― 88 ―

I hope that’s the answer to the question. Thank you.
Rogers : Thank you. So, yeah, I think for me, the big takeaways are this sense of community
and the idea of lesson study as a potential professional development structure to support teacher
identity and agency. So I’m walking away with, last year I was walking away with how social
justice and educational equity could also be part of lesson study, and this year, I’m walking
away thinking more about teacher identity and agency and how lesson study might be a vehicle
to support both student learning in the classroom, but also support teachers in that way. So I’mreally excited to continue to think about that more. When I think about the question about thecore features in our work, I see that we have, whereas the other two presenters talked about,like renewing the research focus, I feel like our focus has been the research focus. And one of
the things that I would really like to do is to back up and to have our teachers experience lesson
study in a more sequential way, because it really did arrive organically. So, you know, ourteachers have the question piece. They have an overarching theme or question. They’reworking on reflection. They’re gathering evidence via student learning, and they’re adjusting
and re-teaching. But I’d be really interested to start from the beginning and develop thosequestions collaboratively. I’m obviously really excited about the possibility, hopefully
eventually, of doing observations either virtually or in person. And I do think our timing, we
just used our timing from the original research proposal that we were working with of when
we would be meeting. But I think in continuing, I think it’d be really interesting to do the cycle
in a much more timely fashion. So working together to organically create meetings that makes
sense, for meeting right after an observation and meeting again. So those are the things that
I’m looking forward to. And I’m thinking about this idea now of focusing on a curriculum unit
as well, which I think our teachers may appreciate because that’s something that they can makemultiple kind of changes and actions, versus focusing on one lesson. So thank you.

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Closing Comments

Learning from PELSTE 2022
Agnaldo Arroio(University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Indira Subramanian(National Institute of Education, Singapore)
Kaycee Rogers(University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
Catherine Lewis(Mills University, USA)
Christine Kim Eng Lee(National Institute of Education, Singapore)
Kazuhiro Kusahara(Hiroshima University, Japan)
Jongsung Kim(Hiroshima University, Japan)

Arroio : “Ohayou”, thank you for this opportunity again, and also especially for Hiroshima
University to give this experience for me, with lesson study. As I said, I heard about lesson
study. I read about lesson study from my colleagues from Lisbon University. But when I wasin Hiroshima in 2020, I lived it because I could see lesson study in practice. The mostremarkable experience that I had there, it was to see very young students debating about theexperience that they had in the Peace Memorial Park. Yet, when we visited that room, andyou could see very, very young children discussing about if it was allowed to run and screamon that memorial park. It was really make remarkable for me. So thank you so much for
Hiroshima University which gave me a chance to see the lesson study in practice. Yeah, thankyou. Thank you and for all of the audience and participants, discussants and all of the EVRI
team that provide us these amazing and unforgettable experience. Thank you so much.
Subramanian : It’s been an absolute privilege to be a part of the PELSTE 2020-21 and20022, and to learn from my colleagues and all the experts, the discussants and presentersand of course, the team at EVRI. You’ve planted more ideas into my head, especially insession about how I can use LS to truly consider empowering solutions for Indian educators― 93 ―

to think about taking control over their own professional development and to truly
disseminate that and realize good quality learning outcomes in our classroom, which is ofdire needs in our country. So I think that this session particularly has given me so much andleaves me very hopeful, despite all the challenges that the world has been facing eveneducationally in the last couple of years. But it leaves me with so much of hope and withinspiration that we can overcome these difficulties through collaborative and collegial andcollective efforts, so thank you so much.
Rogers :Yes, I echo the thanks to both Hiroshima University and EVRI and INEI, ourdiscussants and our presenters. I am again just really grateful for the opportunity to have myown professional development impacted as a teacher educator in this way. And I think it’s
been really valuable for me. And like Indira, I walk away with many more ideas and waysthat I can continue to work on this and implement it. I think just a final thought is justthinking about the power and opportunity to empower teachers to impact student learning. So
I think we all have shared a lot about what the work that we’ve done with teachers, but just a
reminder that the ultimate goal for this work is to impact student learning and provide more
equitable education opportunities globally. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity here for us
to continue to think about how our young people, young students can be impacted when theirteachers are empowered in their professional development.
Lewis :

Thank you very much to the whole Hiroshima and EVRI crew, this was an

exceptionally well-organized experience and I really appreciate that. Thank you also to thepanelists. Your work is very inspiring and I think all the problems and also the strengths thatyou identified. I hope you’ll be writing about those. I hope you’ll be sharing them because it’sby sharing our knowledge that we learn. For example, you know, what are the little incidents
that build trust or what are the little incidents that build teacher agency? And if we can bringthose all together, we can do better. When I first started working on lesson study more than
20 years ago in the U.S., I was often told US teachers can’t do this. They lack the content
knowledge. US teachers can’t do this. We lack the collaborative culture. And I knew those
things weren’t true. And US teachers, in fact, were eager to do this. And I think it’s animportant lesson that culture is created by people and culture can be changed by people, and I
look forward to working with all of you to do that.

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Lee : Yeah, I think, thank you very much, Dr. Kim, and Dr. Kazuhiro, for organizing this
symposium. I think we form a community of learners here. I’ve learned so much from thepanelists and from the comments that Catherine raised. So thank you for being my teachers
this evening from Singapore. And I think for the rest of you, let’s not give up in the work that
we believe in and what we do and for our doctoral students in this panel, Kaycee and Indira.
We do have a doctoral and special interest group for doctoral students in WALS, so pleasejoin us at our doctoral community of students involved. And this symposium is just an hour
and a half. So you join us for three days in Kuala Lumpur and we have deeper conversations
about lesson study there. So see you in Kuala Lumpur. We hope we can all travel to Kuala
Lumpur this year. Arigatougozaimasu. Thank you very much.
Kusahara : I enjoyed the conference a lot. So now the PELSTE 2022 has just finished. But
we have a long project, not only this year. We have the next opportunity, PELSTE 2023. So I
want to get more long and collaborative partnerships among the INEI. Thank you very muchfor your cooperation.
Kim : OK, thank you all for your closing comments. So I hope you find the answer totoday’s question that I suggested at the beginning of this symposium. What is Jyugyou
Kenkyuu and lesson study, and why is lesson study and Jyugyou Kenkyuu necessary? So as
Drs. Lewis and Lee mentioned lesson study is not just the model. It is more about that. Thereis a core feature. There is the philosophy behind the models. So we need to think about how
we can realize that philosophy, not just follow the model. That is the core of localizing lesson
study, and I think you already realized that in the cases that three presenters shared today.
Thank you very much for your participation, especially special thanks to the participants who
participated in a very late night or early morning. I appreciate your decision to participate inthis meeting. Bye-bye. Thank you very much.

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