When you re teaching, you must make judgments instantly. When you do a research lesson, your colleagues write down your words and the students words. Your real profile as a teacher is revealed to you for the first time. But only recently has she been learning how to observe students and what they re learning. It is rapidly attracting interest as a long-term school improvement strategy because of the hope it offers for sustained changes in teaching.
Lesson study is far more complex than simply having teachers write lessons together.
It is neither lesson planning nor curriculum design in the traditional sense. Researcher Catherine Lewis of Mills College compares it to quality circles, a cycle of establishing long-term goals, measuring each piece of work against those longer goals, and then making changes. You don t just slavishly put changes into effect. You make changes, look at them very closely, and collect data to see their impact. Then you refine what you do and test it again, said Lewis.