Abstract
This article presents research on how teacher
developers in the United States learn to conduct lesson
study. Although the practice of lesson study is expanding
rapidly in the US, high-quality implementation requires
skilled facilitation. In contexts such as the United States
where this form of professional development is relatively
novel, few teachers have participated in lesson study, so
leaders of lesson study groups do not have that prior experience
to draw upon for facilitation. To establish lesson
study groups, teacher developers are therefore needed in
the US context, but we know little about how leaders who
are new to lesson study learn to do this work. To investigate
this, two novice teacher developers were followed for
a period of eighteen months, from their first exposure to the
literature on lesson study, through their participation in lesson
study conferences, apprenticeship with an experienced
lesson study leader, and into their independent conduct of
lesson study groups. Data show that the facilitators learned
to contend with such issues as teacher resistance, the use
of time, and the shifting imperatives of directing teachers’
work versus stepping back to give teachers autonomy
in determining their collective work. The article concludes
by suggesting that lesson study functions as a countercultural
bulwark in the field of teacher learning by promoting
a participant-driven, time-intensive form of professional
development, and that, despite its novelty and complexity,
teacher developers with strong mathematical and pedagogical
backgrounds become reasonably skillful facilitators in a
surprisingly short span of time.
