A lesson study team does not have to consist only of teachers. Other educational and psychological specialists (e.g. school counsellors, social pedagogues or school psychologists) as well as the school management may also be involved.
Lesson Study can also be carried out in pairs. In this case, the observing teacher should observe two pupils so that the evaluation can be based on observation. Interviews can also be conducted with the pupils to assess their learning, or the results of the research lesson can be collected. If there are more than six people interested, you could consider forming two or more teams to work independently. The teams can work on a common overarching theme or completely independently.
The team can change between the individual Lesson Study processes. However, be sure to review the common norms and rules for working together to ensure good cooperation.
No, this is not necessary. However, make sure that there are enough opportunities for you to observe the pupils' learning and behaviour.
Yes, if everyone in the team agrees. Explain your lesson concept to your guests in advance and what you hope to achieve with your key question and the following evaluation.
A further step of Lesson Study, as practised in Japan, is to share the results with the school and beyond. You can tell others about your experiences and findings from Lesson Study and let them participate in your process.
Ask your colleagues who have expertise in your subject or lesson, for example as a result of professional development. You can also ask other schools in your area. You can ask your local university's didactics department or people in the fields of social pedagogy, educational science, or school psychology (also at universities or counselling centres). The state institute for teacher training and school development in your state may also be able to help you with a specific task.
There is nothing to stop you meeting online in a video conference, for example, to discuss your key question or plan the research lesson. If the research lesson takes place digitally, systematic observation is likely to be more difficult, which is why a face-to-face lesson is preferable. If this is not possible for various reasons, you can collect the students' work from the lesson and conduct interviews with the observed students after the lesson to record their views on the lesson. If you want to conduct the evaluation session online, you need to consider in advance how to visualise the learning activity curves for everyone. We therefore recommend that you conduct the evaluation session in person as close as possible to the research lesson.
Lesson Study work must be adapted to some extent to the possibilities of your school. However, the content of each phase of a Lesson Study process should be taken into account, as it can be assumed that all four phases are necessary for Lesson Study to be effective. Therefore, if you want to carry out Lesson Study, you cannot skip any of the phases.
You can control how the process is carried out over time: it is possible to intensify the process and complete it in a shorter period of time, or to balance it out by planning dates further apart. The first phase ("Identify challenges and formulate a research question") can be shortened if you want to continue working on a key question from a previous Lesson Study process or adapt it. Ideas for new or expanded key questions are often generated during the evaluation session in Phase 4. Write them down and collect them so that you can refer back to them in the following process. The research lesson is usually planned together as the co-construction of the lesson is central to the process. However, you can also divide the previous research work.
