College Lesson Study

Observing Research Lessons

In higher education, classroom observations are usually conducted to evaluate or provide the teacher with feedback about instructional practices. Typically, a single observer sits in on a class and takes notes about the instructor’s performance. Observations tend to be done infrequently and play little, if any, role in instructional improvement.

In contrast, teachers observe research lessons to gather evidence about how the instructional activities affect student learning and thinking. In lesson study there is much less emphasis on observing the teacher and much more emphasis on how students respond to the lesson. Observation during a lesson opens a window on student thinking. For some instructors this is the first time they see a lesson through the students’ eyes, and focus on how students interpret and make sense of the material.

To prepare for the observation teams decide: who to observe, what to observe, how to record data, and how to coordinate the observation.

Who to observe. Teams may focus on specific individuals or groups of students (e.g., students who differ in ability and performance in the class). Or, if the lesson involves group work, the team may pre-select certain groups for observation.   

What to observe.  Teams identify in advance what types of data to observe and collect (e.g, student-student interactions, types of questions students ask in class, student responses to instructor questions, students’ written work, etc.). An important focal point of observation is student thinking directly related to the lesson’s learning goals. For example, in one of our psychology lesson studies, we defined understanding—a major goal of the lesson—as the ability to predict and explain certain types of social behavior. During the lesson students engaged in several exercises that involved prediction and explanations. Observers attended closely to how students formed and revised explanations in these episodes.

Instructors also attend to broader features of teaching and learning during the lesson—how students approach the class, how they interact with one another, how they respond to the instructor, and variations in student behavior. In one of our own research lessons, students worked in small groups on several tasks, and we used their group summaries as evidence of their learning. However observers noticed that several groups were off task during the lesson. Worse, they were able to fake a credible response when asked to give a group summary of their ideas. Had we not observed this activity, we might have inferred from their summaries that the small group task was a key to their learning. 

How to record data. Data collection techniques vary from relatively unstructured note-taking to the use of checklists and rubrics. Teams adopt strategies best suited to their research lesson. Three common techniques:      
     1. Field notes are detailed written notes by observers, and a good way to record the entire lesson. When there are multiple observers, it is possible to get detailed observations of specific students or groups of students.
     2. Focal questions orient observers to key features of the lesson and student responses (e.g., “To what extent do students challenge and support one another’s ideas when they work in small groups?”; “In what ways do students exhibit interest or disinterest in the lesson?”). Focal questions help insure that observers will attend to specific aspects of the lesson.
     3. Checklists are useful ways to monitor specific types of responses (e.g., the number of times students make metacognitive comments such as “I don’t understand this.”; “Oh, that’s what he means? I was thinking just the opposite.”).

Coordinating the observation. The team prepares Observation Guidelines prior to the lesson. These include a copy of the lesson plan and a detailed description of what observers should do and attend to during the lesson (e.g., take field notes, answer focal questions, use checklist, etc). See an example of observation guidelines for a psychology lesson

Bill Cerbin

Demonstrating Teaching Effectiveness

Q: How can lesson study work provide evidence of teaching effectiveness?

A: Lesson study is substantive professional work that should count in retention, promotion and tenure. Lesson study practitioners spend considerable time discussing goals and outcomes, collaborating with professional colleagues, participating in a peer review process, designing instructional activites, gathering evidence of student learning, making evidence-based improvements, and acting as reflective practitioners. Moreover, when they finish their final lesson study reports (read more), they contribute to a pedagogical knowledge base in their fields.

Lee Shulman writes,

a scholarship of teaching will entail a public account of some or all of the full act of teaching — vision, design, enactment, outcomes, and analysis — in a manner susceptible to critical review by the teacher's professional peers, and amenable to productive employment in future work by members of that same community.

Lesson study is a window into the "full act of teaching" and thus provides richer information about teaching effectiveness than the disparate items typically included in teaching portfolios—namely, course syllabi, assignments, exams, grade distributions, student evaluations, teaching philosophies, etc. More significantly perhaps, lesson study shows how vision, design, enactment, outcomes, and analysis are integrated in actual classroom practice.

Lesson study practitioners know firsthand how lesson study work connects with teaching more generally. They know how careful instructional design and close observation of student learning can lead to improvement of instruction. However, how can they help outsiders, particularly those on retention, promotion and tenure committees, understand the work they have done?

The Teaching Improvement Profile (TIP) developed by Bill Cerbin provides an answer. This template is designed with brevity, coherence, and complexity in mind. It helps teachers tell their individual stories about lesson study.

• Download a Teaching Improvement Profile (.doc) to learn more.

Reference

Shulman, Lee. (1985). "Course anatomy: The dissection and analysis of knowledge through teaching," in Hutchings,Pat, (Ed.) (1998), The Course Portfolio: How Faculty Can Examine Their Teaching to Advance and Improve Student Learning. Washington D.C., AAHE

Bryan Kopp

Making Student Thinking Visible

The study of a lesson involves observation of student learning and thinking throughout the class period. Consequently, the lesson must make student thinking visible and open to observation and analysis. Thinking is visible or audible when students answer questions, participate in discussions, work out problems, write answers, and demonstrate skilled action. For example, student discussions are opportunities to watch students trying to make sense of new material and ideas. And, students reveal their thinking when they try to explain an idea, think through a problem out loud or justify a response.

Some classes that are highly interactive afford multiple opportunities to see and hear student thinking during the class period. But large classes in particular pose a challenge. In these cases, instructors may want to experiment with active learning techniques that have been used in large classes (these can also be used in smaller classes).  For more information, please download the following document:

• "Several Instructional Techniques that Make Students’ Thinking Visible"

Bill Cerbin

Looking Inside the "Black Box"

A major challenge in lesson study is to observe student learning as it takes place during the lesson. This involves observing how students engage and try to make sense of the subject matter. If we know more about how students learn, we should be better able to improve the lesson. 

However, focusing on how students learn is unfamiliar territory for many in higher education. We often examine learning after our instruction has taken place, using tests, quizzes, and other assignments. Through pre‐tests and background knowledge probes, we sometimes collect information about what students know before instruction. Lesson study sheds light on what happens during the learning process. Lesson study involves gaining access to the thought process—peering inside the black box—to better understand how college and university students construe the subject, where they stumble, what confuses them, how they put ideas together, how misconceptions develop, how their thinking is affected by different parts of the lesson.

Student interactions and discussions are opportunities to watch students trying to make sense of new material and ideas. When students try to explain an idea, think through a problem out loud or justify a response, they reveal their thought processes. As a teacher you have a chance to “see and hear” what the topic looks like to students, and think about how to plan instruction to better support student thinking.

Tips for observing students during the research lesson. 

• As you design the lesson, build in episodes, activities, exercises, interactions through which students externalize their thinking and make it open to observation and analysis.  To the extent possible, make students' thinking visible--and audible.
• More evidence is better. Think of lesson study as an exploratory study. You may not know in advance which factors are most important for student performance so it is a good idea to collect a lot of evidence—written work plus observations of students throughout the class period.

A classic book on learning, available for free online reading:

• How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice, "Key Findings" (Chapter 2) (Donovan, Bransford & Pellegrino)
• For the original text, visit How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School (Bransford, Brown and Cocking).  Other versions may be found here.

Cerbin & Kopp

Developing the Eyes to See Students

What's the most important benefit to lesson study?
You develop the eyes to see children.
~ A Japanese elementary principal (Lesson Study: A Handbook of Teacher-Led Instructional Change by Catherine Lewis, p. 27)

What does it mean to "see students"? Why is it important to develop the eyes to see students? And how does lesson study promote this capacity in teachers? At the college level, the phrase “seeing students” brings to mind national surveys and reports (e.g., NSSE and CIRP) that describe college students’ beliefs, social attitudes, and academic behavior, including the Beloit College Mindset List which lists generational touchstones and benchmarks for each new freshmen class (e.g., For the class of 2009 born in 1987, “Starbucks, souped-up car stereos, telephone voicemail systems, and Bill Gates have always been a part of their lives”). These provide a broad range of information about students as a cohort or group. “Seeing students” also brings to mind understanding students as people—their interests, goals, lives—as a result of getting to know them in and outside the classroom.

But “seeing students” has a more specific meaning related to classroom teaching. In this case it is seeing and understanding how they learn and think as they interact with the subject matter, trying to make sense of the material, solve problems, interpret new ideas, make decisions, and so forth. I believe this is the form of seeing the Japanese elementary school principal has in mind.

Is it important for teachers to understand how students learn and think? If a teacher’s major aim is to advance student learning and thinking, then understanding how they learn is indispensable. Most good teachers recognize that their students rarely achieve deep understanding of the subject matter, and there is almost always a sense at the end of a class period or a course that teaching and learning could be improved. In order to improve their teaching, teachers need to know why students didn’t learn or didn’t “get it.” Without some insight into student learning and thinking, teaching improvement is pretty much guesswork.   Being able to “see” the subject from students’ point of view can help teachers understand what kinds of problems, difficulties and misconceptions students are likely to have. Knowing what makes a topic difficult for a student can help teachers design instructional activities, develop explanations, and give feedback more directly attuned to the problem. To illustrate consider teachers who are adept at explaining difficult concepts to students. They seem to be aware of what makes a concept difficult for students to understand, and base their explanations on how students (novices) might understand the concept, rather than on how the teacher (expert) understands it. Teachers who do not have this kind of “cognitive empathy” are more likely to explain concepts as if they are talking to themselves or to another expert on the subject.

How does lesson study develop the eyes to see students? How students learn and think seems to be at the center of Japanese lesson study. In planning a research lesson teachers anticipate and predict how students are likely to interpret and respond to parts of the lesson. During the lesson their observations focus on how students experience, interpret and make sense of the subject. And, their post-lesson discussions analyze student thinking in depth and detail. Imagine the rich and varied insights into student learning and thinking one might develop by doing lesson study regularly throughout one’s teaching career.  In many accounts of lesson study, Japanese teachers reveal a keen sense of how their students learn and think and use that knowledge to design, observe, analyze and refine class lessons. For examples see:

• Can You Lift 100KG? (available for viewing online)—a compelling video of lesson study excerpts with a group of Japanese schoolteachers.
• Developing “The Eyes to See Students”: Data Collection During Lesson Study, by Catherine C. Lewis, Akihiko Takahashi, Aki Murata, and Elizabeth King.
• Lesson Study: A Japanese Approach to Improving Mathematics Teaching and Learning by Clea Fernandez and Makoto Yoshida, 2004.   

Building Professional Knowledge

Lesson study is not only a way to improve the teaching of those who participate in the process, it can be a way to improve the practice of teaching more generally. For example, in Japan teachers produce more than 4000 research papers annually based on their lesson study work. As researchers note

Together these writings provide an extensive repository of professional knowledge and ideas that teachers engaged in lesson study can learn and build from. Clearly, through this well developed system of publications, teachers from all corners of Japan can learn from each other’s lesson study activities. (Fernandez & Yoshida, 2004, p. 213)

Imagine what teaching would be like if you were able to refer to lesson studies on the topics you teach? Instead of starting from scratch—as most of us do—you could build on the work of others, adapt strategies and materials to your classes, and anticipate the kinds of problems and difficulties students might experience.

Lesson study should be a way to build and share professional knowledge about college teaching. Your lesson study could and should be available so that other teachers can learn from it and build upon it. Toward this end, we have established a way to make your work usable and accessible through the final report. In the report you will provide a detailed plan of the lesson, explain how it is intended to work, describe how students performed, discuss what you learned, and suggest how to improve the lesson. The report will be available online, making it possible to include lesson materials such as student handouts, instructor notes, video clips of the lesson and other related materials.   

Our aim is to start an online library and database of college lessons. Your Final Lesson Study Report will be one of the first contributions. Teachers will be able to access your lesson plan and materials and learn about how students responded to your lesson.