TITLE:
Lesson Study and Lesson Sharing: An Appealing Marriage
AUTHORS:
Mackenzie Hird, Richard Larson, Yuko Okubo, Kanji Uchino
KEYWORDS:
Lesson Study, Lesson Sharing, Technology Enabled Education, Professional Development
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.5 No.10,
June
19,
2014
ABSTRACT: Lesson study and
lesson sharing are two educational initiatives that, if merged, have the
potential to revolutionize how teachers plan and deliver lessons. Lesson study
is the joint production of lessons by a small team of teachers over the course
of a few months. The resulting lesson plan is usually “on paper” and used only
locally. Lesson sharing occurs on the Internet, providing contributing teachers
with a mechanism for sharing their lessons with others. Typically a single
teacher authors these shared lessons. We discuss the advantages and associated
implementation barriers of each when viewed as separate activities, and then
argue for their joint or merged implementation, describing how each would
synergistically support the other. Not only would more vetted lessons be
delivered to the Internet, but also the teacher teams participating in lesson
creation would develop a much deeper understanding of pedagogy. We offer policy
recommendations to support this new educational paradigm: A virtual marriage of
lesson study and lesson sharing.