Lesson and Learning Study: a globalizing form of teacher research

In 2007 the World Association of Lesson Study held its inaugural conference in Hong Kong in the wake of the growing influence of Japanese Lesson Study internationally and its transformation in Hong Kong into Learning Study. At the heart of Lesson Study is the collaborative development of a lesson plan through a series of 'research lessons'. Teachers engaged in teaching the same lesson observe each other teaching it in turn, pooling their observations between lessons as a basis for making collective decisions about further changes to the lesson plan, which are then subsequently tested in the next research lesson. In Hong Kong the Lesson Study was fused with a phenomenographic approach to the study of learning used by Marton and his co-workers in Sweden. This approach was concerned with the development and testing in classrooms of a learning theory known as the theory of variation. In Sweden, and at first in Hong Kong, Learning Study was viewed as a form of 'design experiment' rather than a form of action research. Although teachers collaborated with researchers to undertake a Learning Study the primary responsibility for data gathering and analysis lay with the latter. However, in the Hong Kong context, where teachers and schools were being given space to develop their own curriculum programmes within a broad framework of aims and principles, variation theory became integrated with a lesson study process aimed at developing teachers capabilities to effect worthwhile curriculum and pedagogical change. In this context it was transformed into a pedagogical theory to be tested through teacher-led action research rather than through design experiments. The transformation of Lesson Study into Learning Study in Hong Kong challenges a widespread western assumption that action research is about the development of practice rather than theory. However, embedding it in Lesson Study may restrict its usefulness as an object of inquiry for practitioner research. Teacher participation in learning oriented Lesson Study in Hong Kong is therefore heavily dependent upon the commitment of school leaders and their ability to marshal scarce resources, in terms of time and manpower, for this kind of practitioner research. And given such conditions many have questioned whether it can be integrated into the working practices of teachers on a sustainable basis. However, even if they are right, one can still ask questions about the long-term impact of this form of resource intensive and procedurally inflexible teacher research on the pedagogical practices of the teachers involved, and compare it with the impact of less resource intensive and more flexible kinds of teacher research.