Student dominance during mathematics lessons
Mathematics lesson teaching methods
The thinking required during seatwork fell into three categories:
Exercise
: exercise routine procedures,
Application
: apply concepts or proce-
dures in new situations,
Deliberation
: invent something new or deliberate situations
in new ways.
The graph shows that Japanese students spent about equal amounts of time exercising
routine procedures and inventing something new, whereas German and American students
spent almost all their time exercising routine procedures. (Stigler1999, p70)
Published in 1999, Teaching Gap caused a boom in Lesson Study in the US. This
diagram shows numbers of schools and teacher are increasing though 2002 to 2004.
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(http://www.tc.columbia.edu/lessonstudy/timeline.html)
In 2007, the World Association on Lesson Studies was launched in Hong Kong and, since
then, has been regularly held. In this year, the conference of WALS will be held in Sweden.
According to Dr. Hiroyuki Kuno, except Japan and Kazakhstan, USA, UK, Singa-
pore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Thai, China, Sweden are practic-
ing Lesson Study in their own context. (Kuno 2011 WALS)
The objective of Lesson Study
The objective of Lesson Study is different in each school. There are three types of
Lesson Study that differ according the objective. The first type focuses on the unified theme
of Lesson Study, the second type focuses on improving teaching skills and the third type of
Lesson Study focuses on improving observation skills.
In the first type of Lesson Study, all teachers collaborate with one another, set a unified
research theme, conduct Lesson Study according to the research theme and collect data or
information through each Lesson Study. Finally, at the end of the school year, they publish
a research report. In this type of Lesson Study, each teacher conducts Lesson Study not for
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themself, but for the unified research theme. Each Lesson Study during the year consists of
parts of the school-wide Lesson Study process. In this case, discussion of the lesson plan
becomes more important. Each lesson plan has to relate to the research theme for the school.
With each Lesson Study cycle, teachers try to attain research outcomes for the unified theme.
The theme of Lesson Study may be:
• developing discussion between students
• developing critical thinking in students
• using group/pair work
• using ICT tools
• developing reading skill
• developing skills of self expression
• deepening the meaning of number or quantity using concrete objects
In Japan, many schools conduct this type of Lesson Study, and my research paper shows
the effectiveness of this type of Lesson Study. But this requires a lot of experience in Lesson
Study and so I do not want to recommend this type of Lesson Study yet for Kazakh teachers
In the second type of Lesson Study, a volunteer teacher conducts Lesson Study inde-
pendently. This teacher sets his/her own research theme, and tries to develop his/her teach-
ing method independently. He/she writes a lesson plan according to the research theme and
opens the research lesson which is observed by a group of teachers. The lesson is discussed
with the observers, and then he/she rewrites the lesson plan and opens a second research
lesson. In this type of Lesson Study, the teacher who opens the research lesson gets feed-
back from the Lesson Study cycle and can improve his/her teaching skills. Lesson Study
conducted in UK or USA is similar to this type.
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For example, the UK researcher, Dadley(2011) describes the process of Lesson Study
as an improving process for the teacher. He emphasizes the process of collecting data from
case pupils who reflect different groups of learner in the class. By observing and interview-
ing case pupils, observers can understand how students learn during the lesson and how
effective the lesson plan is.
The USA researcher, Lewis (2002) describes the Lesson Study process as a manage-
ment cycle:
1. Form a Lesson Study group
2. Formulate goals for student learning and long term development
3. Collaboratively plan a research lesson
4. Conduct the lesson with one team member teaching and others gathering evi-
dence on student learning and development
5. Discuss the evidence gathered during the lesson, using it to improve the lesson,
the unit and general instructions.
6. Teach the revised lesson in another class room
This type of Lesson Study can promote a teacher’s teaching skill. Both researchers
describe the Lesson Study process with a volunteer group of teachers in the school. There
is a big difference between Japanese Lesson Study and UK or USA Lesson Study. Lesson
Study in Japan is conducted by all teachers in the school whereas Lesson Study in UK or
USA is conducted by a group of volunteer teachers.
In the third type of Lesson Study, all teachers in the faculty open research lessons, at the
same time observing research lessons of their colleagues. While observing lessons, teachers
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can share good practice and develop their own teaching skills and observation skills. In this
type of Lesson Study, teachers can set their own research theme like second type, but it is more
useful for them to set unified research theme. In this type of Lesson Study, each teacher will
open a research lesson once a year, but the focus this time is on the process of observation.
With well developed observation skills, a teacher is able to adequately observe each stu-
dent. Normally when teachers observe lessons, they tend to focus only on the teacher and not on
the students. Teachers should develop their observation skills in order to focusing on students.
In a classroom there are various kinds of students, talented or gifted students and
weak students and a teacher should be able to teach all of these students. In order to do this,
the teacher needs to understand how they are learning, and how they understand the lesson.
Lesson Study encourages teachers to test their assumptions and beliefs, promotes rich
dialogue amongst teachers, fosters a culture of collegiality and professional development,
fosters a culture of collegiality and professional development, focuses teachers on students’
learning needs and promotes a deeper understanding of the curriculum.
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