Lesson Study as a Form of Educational Action Research.

1. Lesson Study as a Form of Educational Action Research. John Elliott, Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia, UK Note: Not to be cited without the presenter’s permission

2. Lesson study as a procedural package. “Lesson study is a system for building and sharing practitioner knowledge that involves teachers in learning from colleagues as they research, plan, teach, observe, and discuss a classroom lesson.” (Lewis, Perry and Friedkin 2009 p.142). As a system for building knowledge it is a procedurally tight, methodical and disciplined process (Matoba, Crawford, Sarker Arani 2006).

3. Key features of lesson study. • Carried out by a group of teachers (3-8 members) • Focuses on the collaborative development of a lesson defined in terms of a topic rather than a unit of time. • The study proceeds through cycles of planning, teaching, and evidence-based discussion. • In each cycle a collaboratively planned lesson is taught by a different teacher, while the other teachers collect observational data, which is then discussed in a post lesson conference as a basis for moving into the next cycle of planning a revised lesson, teaching and discussion. • The teacher group may be facilitated by an expert specialising in the curriculum area concerned.

4. Lesson study as hypothesis testing. • The taught lesson is not simply an object of study/research. Teaching a lesson is an integral part of a cumulative research process in which practical hypotheses developed from discussions of data are systematically tested. • Lesson study is a form of experimental teaching the purpose of which is the production of warranted lesson plans.

5. Lesson study and experimental design. • As a form of experimental research lesson study does not fit traditional experimental designs in educational research. • Such designs involve a particular methodology for securing access to truth. • They employ control groups as a basis for comparison with experimental groups. In lesson study there are no control groups. • They assume that the learning outcomes of an experiment can be pre-specified in advance of the experiment in measureable form. • They employ pre- and post-tests to measure any improvements effected by the experimental group when compared with the control group.

6. The critique of experimental designs as a basis for educational research. • They fail to capture the complexity and particularity of the action contexts of teachers in their classrooms. • Such complexity makes it difficult to control the factors that influence learning in classrooms .e.g. by matching the experimental classrooms with a control group that is not exposed to the factor (independent variable) whose effects are the object of the inquiry. • Educationally worthwhile outcomes such as the development of understanding are difficult to predict in advance of teaching. This is because they depend on the free and creative responses of learners in the pedagogical situation.

7. Lesson study as naturalistic inquiry. • Educational research as a form of naturalistic inquiry emerged in the 1960’s and 70’s from the critique of experimental designs by such influential researchers as Lee Cronbach (1975) and Parlett and Hamilton (1975). • As Simons (2009) points out Cronbach, the noted experimental psychologist, suggested that we reverse our priorities and observe and interpret effects in context: “As he (the observer) goes from situation to situation his first task is to describe and interpret the effect anew in each locale, perhaps taking into account factors unique to that locale---” (p.125, cited by Simons p.16).

8. Practitioner research and the issue of generalisability. • Lesson study may be regarded as a form of practitioner research operating within a naturalistic mode of inquiry. As such it is consistent with a form of action research that emerged in the context of school-based curriculum reform movement in the UK during the 1960’s and 70’s from Lawrence Stenhouse’s notion of the ‘Teacher as Researcher’(1975, Ch.10). • A naturalistic mode of practitioner inquiry into teaching and learning, although grounded in the study of particular action contexts (case study), may yield general insights through teacher engagement in cross-case comparisons in which practically relevant features in common may be discerned. • These discernments provide a basis for forming some general hypotheses for other teachers to test.

9. Curriculum reform, ‘teaching for understanding’ as a pedagogical aim, and the emergence of educational action research. Much curriculum reform has attempted to reconceptualise subject matter in a form that embodied a different theory of the mind of the learner from the one implicit in traditional syllabuses, where the emphasis was on ‘coverage’ rather than ‘depth of understanding’, and the acquisition of information and skills rather than induction into the structures of knowledge conceived as thinking systems.

10. Understanding as a pedagogical aim. • “---we define ‘understanding’ as the capacity to use current knowledge, concepts, and skills to illuminate new problems or unanticipated issues.” (Gardner and Boix-Mansilla 2007 p. 79). • The development of understanding draws on ‘knowledge’ from the disciplines, either from a single discipline or from across a range of disciplines, depending on the problem or issue being addressed. • The disciplines and subjects are not the same. The latter are bodies of content to be learned. The former embody habits of mind or ways of thinking about and interpreting the world. • “In disciplinary work, concepts and theories are not disembodied from the knowledge-building process from which they emerge” (Gardner and Boix-Mansilla 2007 p. 81).

11. Bruner’s 4 folk pedagogies and their models of mind (2007 pp.12-14). • Children as imitative learners. • Learning through direct exposure to propositional knowledge of facts, principles and rules of action to be remembered and then applied. • Children as thinkers learning through inter-subjective interchange with their teacher and peers. • Children as knowledgeable: the management of ‘objective’ knowledge. Many curricular innovations imply a transition from a pedagogy aimed at direct exposure to propositional Knowledge and memory learning to one aimed at developing children’s powers of thinking through social interaction.

12. Is the ‘development of understanding’ the pedagogical aim to be achieved through lesson study? • In Hong Kong lesson study took the form of learning study (Lo, M.L., Pong, W. Y., Pakey, C. P. M. (Eds.) 2006, Elliott, J and Yu, C. 2008). • The learning studydraws on Marton and Booth’s variation theory (1997 )as a pedagogicalorientation for developing students’ understanding of the objects of learning. • The learning study aspires to operationalise learning within what Stenhouse (1975, p.82) called the knowledge mode.

13. Variation theory is based on phenomenographic research. 1.People experience the same phenomenon in qualitatively different ways. 2.Variation will tend to be limited to certain patterns. 3. Students bring their own beliefs and ideas into the formal learning situation and these may conflict with what the teacher tries to teach. Students understand the same curriculum material or teaching act differently. For example, the transmission of factual knowledge may be seen as something to be regurgitated or as challenging existing beliefs and requiring deep reflection. 4. Variation in discernment of the same phenomenon will result in variable learning outcomes - as a norm rather than an exception. 5. Although people experience different understandings of the same object they often assume that others understand it in the same way as they do. Hence it is only too easy for teachers to assume that their pupils will come to understand something in the way they intended. (Lo and Pong 2006, pp. 10-11)

14. Implications for teaching for understanding. Given the different ways individual students experience the same phenomenon, Lo and Pong, argue that teachers need help to develop a pedagogy that caters for individual differences. The central task of such a pedagogy “--- would be, first to find out what these different ways of understanding are and, second, to consider how teaching should be structured to enable students to see what is taught in the intended way.” (p.11) A pedagogy that caters for difference will accept the following reasons for students’ incomplete understandings of the subject matter: • Their intuitive ways of understanding, • They fail to focus on all the critical features of what is to be learnt. • They have not been exposed to suitable learning experiences in the lesson that would have enabled them to learn. In doing so it will challenge, Lo and Pong claim, the common view that what prevents students fully understanding subject-matter is their lack of ability or the failure of their teachers to arrange the classroom as a learning environment in ways that motivate students.

15. Learning within the knowledge mode. • Stenhouse (1975, p. 80) defined education as a process of induction into knowledge, conceived as structures for thinking rather than bodies of information and skills. • Skills and information can be pre-specified as objects of learning in advance of teaching and their acquisition measured. As such they do not in themselves constitute knowledge, although learning them may play a subordinate role in the development of understanding. What makes learning educationally worthwhile is that it operates in the knowledge mode. “The most important characteristic of the knowledge mode is that one can think with it. This is in the nature of knowledge-as distinct from information-that it is a structure to sustain creative thought and provide frameworks for judgement.” (Stenhouse 1975 p. 82).

16. The process model. • For Stenhouse (1975) the development of understandingwithin the knowledge mode could not be pre-specified in the form of an objectives model of curriculum planning without distorting the nature of knowledge. “Education as induction into knowledge is successful to the extent that it makes the behavioural outcomes of the students unpredictable.” (p.82). • The alternative he proposed was a process model (Ch.7). • He argued that educational aims such as the development of understanding are best unpacked as specifications of a form of procedure in the classroom. They imply principles of procedure that define what is to count as a worthwhile process of education that is consistent with the aim. Sometimes such principles are referred to as pedagogical aims.

17. Examples of the process model: Bruner’s Man: A Course of Study (MACOS). “The content of the course is man:his nature as a species, the forces that shape and continue to shape his humanity. Three questions recur throughout: What is human about human beings? How did they get that way? How can they be made more so?” (Bruner 1966, p.74)

18. MACOS (cont) Pedagogical Aims (5 out of 7): 1.To initiate and develop in youngsters a process of question-posing (The Inquiry Method); 2.To teach a research methodology where children can look for information to answer questions they have raised and use the framework of concepts they have developed in the course (e.g. the concept of life cycle) and apply it to new areas; 3.To help youngsters develop the ability to use a variety of first-hand sources as evidence from which to develop hypotheses and draw conclusions; 4. To conduct classroom discussions in which youngsters learn to listen to others as well as to express their own views; 5. To legitimize the search; that is, to give sanction and support to open-ended discussions where definitive answers to many questions are not found. (Hanley, Whitla, Moo, Walter 1970, p.5).

19. The Humanities Project Pedagogical Aim. To develop anunderstanding of social situations, human acts, and the controversial value issues which they raise. (Stenhouse, 1975 p. 93).

20. HCP: the procedural principles implied by the aim (The Humanities Project: An Introduction 1983). : 1.that controversial issues should be handled in the classroom with adolescents; 2. that teachers should not view their authority as teachers as a platform for promoting their own views (procedural neutrality); 3. that the mode of enquiry in controversial areas should have discussion rather than instruction at its core; 4. that the discussion should protect divergence of view among participants; 5.that the teacher as chairperson of the discussion should have responsibility for quality and standards in learning.

21. The teacher as researcher Procedural principles implied by the development of understanding as a pedagogical aim do not prescribe teachers’ concrete actions in the teaching situation. They provide a practical orientation and a guide for systematic reflection/action research about whether the teacher’s actions in the classroom are consistent with the pedagogical aim and how they can be made more so. MACOS yielded little systematic action research on how to realise its procedural principles in action but HCP under the leadership of Stenhouse did.

22. HCP: teachers develop and test general hypotheses in the classroom Through collaborative research with teachers at the development phase of the project general hypotheses about problems and strategies were developed for teachers generally to test in their own classroom situations. To this end the hypotheses were embodied in questions for teachers to ask when analysing and discussing recordings of their lessons and observational and interview data gathered around them (see the self-training procedure in The Humanities Project: An Introduction, revised by Jean Rudduck, School of Education, UEA).

23. Some questions from HCP’s self-training procedure. • Reflective discussion can be slow-paced and contain sustained silences. What proportion of these silences are interrupted by you? Is your interruption ever a matter of simply breaking under the strain rather than a real contribution to the task of the group? • Do you press towards consensus? e.g. “Do we all agree?” If so, what is the effect of this type of question? Compare this with the effect of “ What do other people think?”

24. Some questions from HCP’s self-training procedure (cont) • To what extent do you confirm? Do you, for example, say “An interesting point” or “Well done.” What is the effect of this on the group? • What prompts you to provide the group with a piece of evidence? Was the piece of evidence in practice helpful to the discussion? • Are you neutral on controversial issues? (Further questions ask teachers to reflect on the different ways they may explicitly and implicitly bias discussion. e.g. “Do you draw attention by questions to certain parts or aspects of a piece of evidence which seems to support a view point with which you agree?”) • Do you attempt to transmit through eliciting questions your own interpretation of the meaning of a piece of evidence such as a poem or a picture?

25. The Ford Teaching Project: action research into inquiry/discovery teaching (Elliott 2007, Ch.2). The pedagogical aim of inquiry learning was defined in terms of independent or self directed thinking. This aim was then analyzed into four basic freedoms for students. The following formulation represents the outcome of discussions with the teachers: (1) to identify and initiate problems for inquiry; (2) to express their own ideas and develop lines of inquiry; (3) to discuss problems, ideas and evidence; (4) to test hypotheses and evaluate evidence. (p.41).

26. Ford T’s procedural principles The pedagogical implications of the four freedoms of Inquiry Learning were then specified as a set of negative and positive procedural principles for orientating the role of teachers. The negative principles emphasized the teacher’s responsibility to refrain from actions that impose constraints on students exercising these freedoms, with a reminder also to do all in their power to protect students from other forms of external constraint. The positive principles emphasize the teacher’s responsibility to intervene in the learning process in ways that actually enhance students capabilities to exercise the freedoms. Implicit in the procedural principles is a distinction between the negative and positive aspects of freedom. Students, for example, may be free from external constraints on their freedom to express their own ideas and develop them into hypotheses but still be unable to exercise this freedom because they lacked the necessary capabilities (pp.41-42).

27. Ford T as experimental teaching This clarification of the aims and principles of inquiry teaching was subsequently used by Ford T teachers as a framework for gathering and analyzing data about the problems of engaging students in inquiry learning and testing strategies to ameliorate them. In the light of it they were able to identify the extent to which their teaching strategies constrained or facilitated inquiry learning, and to compare and contrast their experience across a range and variety of classroom, school and curriculum contexts. Over time they were able to discern certain universal patterns of interaction in each others’ classrooms that were problematic for the realization of their pedagogical aim, and begin to experiment with strategies for changing them in discussion with each other.

28. Representing findings in Ford T: two examples (Ford Project Teachers 1972). 2. The freedom to express ideas and develop lines of inquiry. Procedural Principles (a) Refrain from preventing students expressing their own ideas and developing lines of inquiry. (b) Help students to develop their own ideas and lines of inquiry. Constraint 2.7 Subject-centered Focusing When the teacher’s questions focus students’ attention solely on the subject-matter, rather than on their own ideas about it, s(he) may prevent them from initiating or developing their own ideas. Such focusing will be interpreted as an attempt to find out whether they know what s (he) expects them to know. Constraint Removing Strategy Refrain from framing your questions in terms which draw attention exclusively to the subject-matter rather than students’ thoughts about it. Guidance Strategy Ask person-centered questions which focus the students’ attention on their own ideas with respect to the subject-matter.

29. Representing findings in Ford T(cont) 3.Freedom to discuss problems, ideas and evidence Procedural Principles Refrain from restricting students’ access to discussion. Help pupils to learn how to discuss Constraint 3.4 Reinforcing ideas When the teacher responds to students’ ideas with utterances like ‘good’, ‘yes’, ‘interesting’ etc. s (he) may prevent others from expressing alternative ideas. Such utterances can be interpreted as rewards for providing the responses required by the teacher. Constraint Removing Strategy Refrain from utterances that might imply finality e.g. ‘yes’, ‘good’, ‘right’. Guidance Strategy Reward students for their contributions to discussion by listening carefully to their remarks and asking others to do so. The idea behind the construction of such a knowledge-base was to provide other teachers, who embraced a similar pedagogical aim, with a set of diagnostic and action-hypotheses to examine, test, refine and further develop in relation to their own pedagogical practices. Hence, it was hoped that other teachers might avoid constantly 'reinventing the wheel', while having space for exercising personal judgments in an ongoing process of collaborative professional knowledge construction.

30. Variation theory supplies procedural principles for lesson study. The use of variation theory in lesson study supplies procedural principles to pedagogically orientate teachers in catering for individual differences in their students’ understanding of the object of learning e.g. enable students to: -make explicit their commonsense beliefs and theories about the object of learning; -acknowledge and discuss the different patterns of belief that have been brought to light; -challenge these patterns by experiencing different Aspects (critical features) of the object of learning. The realisation of these principles are necessary conditions of students being able to develop their understanding of the object of learning.

31. Educationalaction research is not a methodology. Educational action research is a form of practical reasoning (phronesis) as distinct from theoretical reasoning (episteme) and instrumental/technical reasoning (techne). There are no methodological constraints on educational action research that will guarantee access to essential truth. It is shaped by a democratic rationality (Elliott 2007,2009).

32. Educational action research as a disciplined conversation informed by evidence. Good conversation is always a disciplined activity in the sense that it requires participants to cultivate certain democratic dispositions or virtues. These include a willingness to see one’s own and other peoples’ situation from different points of view, and to reflect about and revise one’s own understanding in the light of them. Methods of inquiry are derived from the need to inform good conversations about the problems and issues that arise in practice rather than ‘theories of knowledge’. They include observation and interview methods and questionnaires woven into a strategy for looking at a situation from different points of view, such as those of the teacher, the students, and observers (triangulation). Lesson study might be viewed as a form of educational action research in these terms.

33. Networked Learning Communities. Educational action research is appropriately located in a networked learning community to provide a context for developing pedagogical knowledge that secures conditions for co-ordinated action across classrooms and schools.

34. Inquiry as democratic rationality. • “There are no constraints on inquiry save conversational ones, no wholesale constraints derived from the nature of objects, or of the mind, or of language, but only those retail constraints provided by the remarks of our fellow inquirers” (Richard Rorty 1982 p. 165)).

35. NLCs: Key Characteristics. • A sense of common purpose e.g. the development of imaginative and innovative pedagogies. • A shared object of learning e.g. how to change classroom practice. • A democratic process of mutual learning in which members are willing to learn from each other and there is an absence of a ‘hierarchy of credibility’ e.g. of control over what is to count as credible knowledge exerted by administrators, school managers, educational researchers/theorists.

36. NLCs: Key Characteristics (cont). • Communication between members takes the form of open-ended and free-flowing conversations about the object of learning. • Members engage in learning activities that promote conversation e.g. teachers observe or view video-records of each other teaching. • Learning takes place by each individual ‘in-voicing’ the different perspectives of others on the object of learning to enrich and extend their own.

37. NLCs: Key Characteristics (cont). • Learning outcomes are personal and unpredictable, and do not depend upon the elimination of differences in outlook (achieving consensus). • Learning as a social process of ‘re-weaving one’s personal web of belief’ (Rorty) in conversation with others, rather than discovering ‘the truth’. • Participation is voluntary rather than compulsory or coerced.

38. Lesson Study in Networked Learning Communities. • Lesson study brings teachers and academic experts together as a learning communities in schools. • Such learning communities may be networked within schools by school leaders and across schools by academics and administrators in the school system. • The networking of LS communities offers the prospect of practitioners and academic curriculum experts building shared professional knowledge about how to teach for understanding in particular topic areas.

39. Who has the right to belong to a school-based learning community? • Teachers? • Student teachers? • Principals and other senior managers? • Students (pupils)? • Parents? • School Governors? • Educational Researchers?

40. Frontline teachers in a HK primary school discussing the impact of lesson study.

41. Teachers in a HK primary school explaining variation theory to John Elliott

42. Pupils discussing their learning experiences in a HK primary school with John Elliott

43. Pupils discussing their learning experiences in a HK primary school with John Elliott.

44. A HK primary school principal with her teachers and researchers from HKIEd

45. An issue of trust. • Teachers are more likely to trust their professional peers teaching the same subject to the same age-range of students, than peers teaching different subjects to a different age-range. • In a context of strong competition between schools for results teachers are more likely to trust professional peers in the same school. • Lesson study can provide a strong foundation for building networked learning communities across schools as a basis for creating shared pedagogical knowledge.

46. Summary statement. Lesson and learning studies may share many of the features that characterise a process of educational action research inasmuch as they: have the ‘development of understanding’ as their main aim; focus on changing practice to make it consistent with such an aim; gather evidence about the extent to which practice is consistent with the aim; problematise the beliefs and assumptions of teachers that underpin their practices; involve teachers in generating and testing action hypotheses; view teaching as a form research and vice versa; constitute a democratic and socially inclusive process of knowledge generation.

47. REFERENCES. Bruner, J (1966) Toward a Theory of Instruction, Cambridge,Mass:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Bruner,J (2007) Folk Pedagogies in Moon, R and Leach, J (Eds), Learners and Pedagogy, London: Paul Chapman Publishing. Cronbach, L.J. (1975) Beyond the two disciplines of scientific psychology, American Psychologist (30). Elliott, J (2007) Educational Research as a Form of Democratic Rationality, in Bridges, David and Smith, Richard (Eds.) Philosophy, Methodology and Educational Research, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, Ch. 11.

48. References (cont). Elliott, John (2009) Building Educational Theory through Action Research, in Noffke, S and Somekh, B (Eds) The Sage Handbook of Educational Action Research, Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington.D.C: Sage. Elliott, J and Yu, C (2008) Learning Studies as an Educational Change Strategy, in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Institute of Education. Elliott, J (2007) Developing Hypotheses from Teachers’ Practical Constructs: an account of the work of the Ford Teaching Project, in Reflecting Where the Action Is, The selected works of John Elliott, New York:Routledge.

49. References (cont). Ford Project Teachers (1972) Implementing the Principles of Inquiry/Discovery Teaching: some hypotheses, Unit 3, Ford Teaching Project Materials, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia, Norwich. Gardner, H and Boix-Mansilla, V (1993) Teaching for Understanding in the Disciplines and Beyond, Teachers’ College Record, 96:2. Reprinted in Moon, R and Leach, J (Eds) (2007) Learners and Pedagogy, London: Paul Chapman Publishing. Hanley, J P., Whitla, D K., Moo, E W., Walter, A S. (1970) Curiosity, Competence, Community: Man: a course of study, An Evaluation. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass: Educational Development Center Inc.

50. References (cont). The Humanities Project: An Introduction (1983) (revised by Jean Rudduck), Norwich: School of Education and Lifelong Learning for The Schools Council. Lewis, C., Perry, R., and Friedkin, S., (2009) Lesson Study as Action Research, in Noffke, S., and Somekh, B., (Eds.) The Sage Handbook of Educational Action Research, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi, Singapore: Sage, Ch. 11. Lo, M.L., Pong, W. Y., Pakey, C. P. M. (Eds) (2006) For Each and Everyone: catering for individual differences through Learning Studies, Hong Kong University Press. Lo, M.L. and Pong, W.Y. (2006) Catering for Individual Differences: Building on Variation, in Lo, M.L., Pong, W. Y., Pakey, C. P. M. (eds.) For Each and Everyone: catering for individual differences through Learning Studies, Hong Kong University Press. Marton, F and Booth, S (1997) Learning and Awareness, Mahwah N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.