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. Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2000. As a principal, Lynn Liptak has spent years observing teachers.
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. It really is about learning how children are learning.