Lesson study: designing lessons from students’ perspective

Course goals

1.    The student will be familiar with the principles and methods of Lesson Study, be able to apply them in practice and indicate their value to their own professional development.
2.    The student is able to carry out, in a Lesson Study team, a full cycle of design, evaluation and redesign of lessons and teaching materials in their own school subject.
3.    The student is able to apply educational and curricular theories in the different phases of Lesson Study 


 

Content

The GST’s vocational preparation elective modules are in-depth and/or broadening courses that generally require prior knowledge of pedagogy and didactics. This prior knowledge may, for example, have been acquired through an educational module, an educational minor or a secondary-level teacher training programme. If a course requires access to (one’s own) teaching practice (including placements), this will be stated separately.

Lesson study is an originally Japanese model of professional development in which teachers work together in small teams and design teaching materials around a particular theme relevant to their own school subject. Team members take turns to test this material in their own teaching practice, with the other team members observing what it does to students. From these student observations, there is joint reflection and adjustment of the material before it is tested again. Lesson Study has great potential for students in teacher training and students in education design and evaluation.   
During this course, students go through a full cycle of Lesson Study in which they work in a team to design a lesson or lesson activity around a theme relevant in their own school subject. This could include shaping and leading difficult controversial conversations in the classroom. Each team designs the lesson based on literature and expert input, and formulates goals that are observable in expected student behavior.  One of the team members conducts the jointly designed research lesson while the other team members observe the behavior of one or a few students and briefly interview a student each after the lesson. This research lesson is discussed afterward and modified if necessary. Then the updated research lesson is reimplemented in another class by another teaml

Since you will be testing the lesson ideas in real-life settings (usually a school but other contexts such as a museum are also possible), it is a recommendation if you do this course in parallel with an internship or job. However, this is not a hard requirement.