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Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Lesson Study
by
Blake E. Peterson
NCTM Annual Research Presession
April 21, 2004
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Although preservice teachers have little to no teaching experience prior to entering a
methods class, their experience in 14-15 years of schooling has contributed to the
development of beliefs that are common to the teaching culture in general. These cultural
beliefs can become barriers to the effective implementation of lesson study. Some of the
barriers that have been observed in the methods class are described below along with a
description of the attempts to address them. This discussion is not formally tied to the
research on beliefs nor is it strictly research based but may be a source of potential
research questions for those who are attempting to implement lesson study with any
group.
Anticipating Student Responses
As part of the lesson study process, the preservice teachers write their lessons in the
4-column format commonly associated with lesson study. In this format, column one
contained the questions or tasks that the teacher would ask the students to do and the
second column contained a description of the anticipated student responses. In other
words, the teachers would elaborate on the thinking that they expected the students would
use in response to the task in column one.
In the first study, the preservice teachers were only expected to write their group
research lesson in this format. They resisted using the 4-column format because they felt
that it was difficult to follow. Their weekly individual lesson plan were still written in a
paragraph format. When the paragraph form was used the preservice teachers did not
write down any student responses. They said that they thought about them but they did
not feel that they needed to write these down. They agreed that the 4-column format
forced them to actually write down what they anticipated the students might say.
Since the 4-column format forced the preservice teachers to write down the
anticipated student responses, they were asked to use this format as they wrote their
weekly individual lesson plans during the second study. As the weekly lesson plans were
graded, two things became very apparent: 1) There is no response to anticipate if there is
no task to do; 2) anticipating the thinking of others is a new perspective for these
preservice teachers. The first few weeks of lesson plans had empty second columns. The
lessons still had the look of the teacher modeling a solution strategy and the students
copying down that strategy. In order for this lesson plan format to be effective the
preservice teachers had to first strive to create a lesson that has a problem solving
orientation. Since this is an overarching goal of the methods class, requiring preservice
teachers to anticipate student responses became a good catalyst for them to think about
the nature of the lessons that they were preparing.
Because of the lack of experience working with students, when these preservice
teachers prepared their weekly lesson plans in isolation, they struggled to anticipate
student responses that varied much from their own thinking. They were better at doing
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this in their lesson study groups because the group members themselves had different
approaches to the same problem.
In a continued effort to develop these abilities, this semester, each lesson taught in the
second half of the methods class was observed by two different students. This gave each
student in the class the opportunity to observe two lessons. The goal of the observation
was to record as many different ways of thinking that they could find among their peers
as they watched the teaching of the individual lessons. As a result of doing this, when
they taught the lessons in the public schools, the nature of their observations clearly
focused on student thinking. As soon as a task was presented to the students the observers
immediately began to roam the classroom and record the different methods of thinking.
Rather than focus on the teacher and the presentation of the lesson, they focused on the
thinking that the students were employing in response to the tasks that were presented.
Ownership of the lesson
When research lessons were taught during the first study, something happened during
the debriefing session following the teaching that highlighted some cultural issues that
can inhibit effective lesson study. A group of 4 students had prepared a lesson and one
member of the group taught the lesson while the other three members of the group
observed the lesson. The amount of instruction that the preservice teachers had received
on “how” to observe was limited but they did know that they were to focus on their
peers’ responses to the tasks. At the conclusion of the lesson, the group of 4 went to the
front of the room and the student who had taught the lesson shared how she felt the
lesson had gone. The other members of the group were then given time to add comments
on how the lesson had gone. One member of the group immediately turned to the person
who had taught the lesson and said, “I liked the way that she did this..” and “I liked the
way that she did that…” She made these comments as if she had no part in the creation of
the lesson. As this behavior was exhibited over and over again, it became apparent that
these students were struggling to focus on the lesson and instead could only focus on the
“presentation of the lesson.” In the debriefing session, the preservice teachers’ body
language indicated that it was the teacher conversing with the whole class as well as the
rest of his/her group. The goal, however, was to have the lesson study group conversing
with the whole class.
In a related experience, one group expressed frustration with the expectation that they
were to come up with one lesson for the whole group. They felt that much had been
gained by discussing the mathematics of the lesson but since they all had such different
personalities and presentation styles, it was unrealistic to expect them to come to a
consensus on how to present the lesson. Again there was focus on the “presentation of the
lesson” and not on “the lesson” itself. It was more important to the members of this group
that the lesson met their presentation style as opposed to what would make the most sense
to the students. There was also a sense that their presentation style was a very personal
issue.
One strategy that has been used to create a group ownership of the lesson is to have
the group randomly select the teacher of the lesson the day before it is to be presented.
This requires all members of the group to be completely comfortable with all aspects of
the lesson at all stages of the preparation process.
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Modeling the reflection meeting
At an NCTM meeting a few years ago, I attended a session on lesson study and sat
next to Professor Yoshinori Shimizu from Tokyo Gakugei University. As part of the
presentation, they showed a research lesson along with its accompanying reflection
meeting. As I listened to the directness of the comments made by the Japanese observers
of the lesson, I leaned over to Professor Shimizu and commented on how defensive
teachers in the United States would be with such direct comments. He responded by
indicating that comments were about the lesson and there should be no reason to be
defensive. It was this conversation, along with the way in which the preservice teachers
offered feedback on lessons that helped me see how much our ego is connected to our
teaching. In the United States, if someone were to criticize a lesson, the teacher would
likely view it as a criticism of him or her.
This cultural belief that our teaching is a manifestation of who we are was a barrier to
the preservice teachers being able to offer constructive criticism of each other’s lesson
even when the lesson had been planned by a group. In order to get beyond this barrier to
effective lesson study, I have implemented three strategies that seem to be effective. The
first two strategies were put in place during the second study. The first of these was to
have the preservice teachers watch a research lesson taught by a Japanese elementary
teacher as well as the subsequent reflection meeting. Before watching the reflection
meeting, the preservice teachers were instructed to take note of the nature of the
comments offered by the observing teachers. At the conclusion of this video, one student
offered the observation that “the Japanese teachers seemed to focus on the essence of the
lesson.” The students also noticed how direct the comments were.
The second strategy that was implemented during the second study was modeling the
types of comments that should be offered at the conclusion of a lesson. Since the students
observe their peers teach lessons 4 times a week with a 15 minute reflection meeting at
the conclusion of each lesson, there are many opportunities to offer feedback on lessons
that have been prepared and taught. I realized that if I wanted the students to ask different
types of questions, then I had to model asking those questions. I found an effective
phrasing to be “What was your rationale for sequencing the examples in the way that you
did?” or “What was your rationale for using the numbers that you did in the problem that
you gave us?” Over time, the preservice teachers begin to use similar terminology
instead of only saying “I liked how you were always smiling.” The continual focus on
anticipating student responses was also a topic for post-lesson questioning. For example,
“Did you anticipate getting the response that you got and did you handle it the way that
you had planned to?”
Comments about voice, writing on the blackboard, body language, movement around
the classroom, etc. were purposely avoided by me unless it was a real problem. Since
such observations deal more with the presentation of the lesson than the substance of the
lesson, avoiding such comments modeled the type of observations that the preservice
teachers should make.
The third strategy was implemented during this most recent semester. It was to have a
discussion about the difference between a lesson, the presentation of a lesson and our
ego. The idea that our ego is closely connected to our lessons really resonated with the
students. As the video of the Japanese reflection meeting was watched, the preservice
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teachers saw examples of how comments can be offered without them being viewed as an
attack. This opened the door to further discuss how our ego should not be inseparably
connected with our teaching. Toward the end of the semester, the nature of the
questioning was definitely different in nature than what was observed during the first
study and different from those offered by the same group of preservice teachers earlier in
the course. When asked what they felt had contributed to this change, they indicated that
they felt that the nature of the questions had changed and had become less threatening.
The preservice teachers also said that they had begun to feel more comfortable accepting
direct comments about the lesson after they had taught.
Summary
When attempting to implement lesson study in the United States, there are several
cultural issues that can become a barrier to the effectiveness of the lesson study process.
One of the cultural issues is the type of lessons that are typically taught in the United
States. If the lessons are not problem based with a open ended approach, the discussions
in the lesson study groups are limited. A second cultural issue is the ownership of the
lesson. Teachers in the United States take their teaching very personally and struggle to
plan a lesson as a group. Because they take it so personally, they struggle to separate their
presentation of the lesson from the lesson itself. In all of these situations, the cultural
beliefs must be directly dealt with and talked about. Once preservice teachers are aware
of their beliefs and the potential barriers that these beliefs can be, they are better able to
see beyond these beliefs.
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