Blog from Pete Dudley
The World Association of Lesson Studies (WALS) 2013 International Conference took place from 6 to 9 September in Gothenburg, Sweden. The conference organized by Mona Holmqvist-Olander was held at Gothenburg University in the hottest September weather this century. It was judged a great success by WALS President, Pr. Christine Lee in her closing remarks.
This was a very exciting conference from a UK perspective because it was the first time WALS has held its international conference outside of East Asia. So this was a real opportunity for more Europeans to be able to attend.
Fears that numbers would suffer because Lesson Study is less known in the West were not realised and Sweden attracted over 600 delegates – many of whom made the 12 plus hours flight from East Asia. But as hoped there were many more delegates from Europe than before. Most were from Sweden but others came from European Countries such as Holland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Ireland, Poland, Greece, Spain, France and many others. There were a over 20 of us from the UK.
15 UK delegates presented lesson studies or lesson study related papers. They represented primary, secondary and special schools, academics, and system leaders. A link will be created from this site to all their papers and presentations as soon as they are published on the WALS site.
The same rich mixture of teachers, academics and system leaders was reflected across the conference as a whole, although keynotes were mainly from the field of research. Keynotes were provided by Dr. Makoto Yoshida, Pr, Yanming Chen, Pr. John Elliott, Pf. Ingrid Pramling-Samuelsson, Pr. Ulla Runneson and Pr. Ference Marton.
There was an opportunity to focus on ‘Learning Studies’ – which are lesson studies that utilise variation learning theory as opposed to other theories of learning popular in the UK (such as socio-cultural theory or the popular combined theoretical approach known as Assessment for Learning). Sweden and Hong Kong are centres of learning study.
Next year the WALS conference will take place in Bandung, Indonesia. Planning is already underway for conferences in Hunan, China in 2015 and Exeter, UK in 2016.
Here are some pictures of the event. There are more on the slider on the home page of LSUK.
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