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How Should Research Contribute to Instructional Improvement? The Case of Lesson Study

School of Education, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Boulevard, Oakland, CA 94613; clewis{at}mills.edu. Her research interests lie at the intersection of child development, adult learning, and school reform; she has conducted research in Japanese elementary schools since 1980

Rebecca Perry, Senior Researcher

School of Education, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Boulevard, Oakland, CA 94613; rperry{at}mills.edu. Her research interests include teachers’ learning and professional development, and educational reform and implementation

Aki Murata, Assistant Professor

Stanford University, School of Education, 520 Galvez Mall, Stanford, CA 94305; akimura{at}stanford.edu. Her research interests include elementary mathematics teaching and learning, cognitive and social aspects of learning, and teacher professional development

Lesson study, a Japanese form of professional development that centers on collaborative study of live classroom lessons, has spread rapidly in the United States since 1999. Drawing on examples of Japanese and U.S. lesson study, we propose that three types of research are needed if lesson study is to avoid the fate of so many other once-promising reforms that were discarded before being fully understood or well implemented. The proposed research includes development of a descriptive knowledge base; explication of the innovation’s mechanism; and iterative cycles of improvement research. We identify six changes in the structure and norms of educational research that would enhance the field’s capacity to study emerging innovations such as lesson study. These changes include rethinking the routes from educational research to educational improvement and recognizing a "local proof route"; building research methods and norms that will better enable us to learn from innovation practitioners; and increasing our capacity to learn across cultural boundaries.

Educational Researcher, Vol. 35, No. 3, 3-14 (2006)
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X035003003


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