Pete Dudley’s new article is published in a major international journal and now available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.04.006
Teacher Learning in Lesson Study: What interaction level discourse analysis revealed about how teachers utilised imagination, tacit knowledge of teaching and fresh evidence of pupils learning, to develop practice knowledge and so enhance their pupils learning, Teaching and Teacher Education, 34 (2013) 107-121.
This research conducted at Cambridge University explores what teachers’ group talk in lesson study meetings reveals about how teachers co-construct new practice knowledge and importantly how lesson study seems to help them to switch off filters they put in place in their early careers in order to help them cope with the complexity and speed of classroom interactions. Switching these filters off enables them to see aspects of their pupils learning they have been blind to and this helps teachers to understand their pupils learning more fully and thus to teach them more effectively thereafter. By engaging in a process called ‘rehearsal’ Lesson Study group members are also collectively enabled to access huge reserves of their tacit knowledge about teaching: something which is normally invisible to teachers.
This research is also the first to use interaction level discourse analysis to explore teacher learning through their discussions. Similarities exist between teachers’ learning in collaborative groups in this study and the ways in which pupils use talk to learn in Neil Mercer’s extensive research on classroom group work.
The research contains important messages for teachers, school leaders, teacher educators and researchers as well as policy makers. It points to ways in which lesson study can be set up and used effectively to develop very high quality teaching and leacher learning within schools and between schools in teaching school alliances, which both improve pupil learning and build capacity for sustained improvement.
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