Lessons Learned from Lesson Study

From 2010 to 2013, I had the opportunity to facilitate approximately 70 lesson study days with third grade through high school math teachers in my district.  It was one of the best experiences of my career as my job was focused on learning about how students learn.  So, I thought it would be worthwhile to share some of the lessons learned (many the hard way) as I believe that other educators may find them useful.

First, let me describe the lesson study process we used:

• Day One – Planning the Lesson
  • A group of educators would begin by identifying a concept that students struggled to learn.
  • Next, they would create a lesson that they hoped would help students better understand this concept.
• Day Two – Studying the Lesson
  • The group would start the day by reviewing the lesson they were planning on teaching and making sure everyone was on the same page.
  • Next, one educator (or occasionally a pair of educators) in the group would teach the lesson to a class of students while the rest of the group observed how the students learned and took notes on the lesson’s effectiveness.
  • After the lesson, the educators would debrief what they observed and suggest modifications to make the lesson more effective.
  • Then, another educator (or pair of educators) would teach the lesson one more time to a new class of students while the rest of the group observed once again.
  • Finally, there would be one last debrief where the group discussed all that was learned through the process.

To some this may sound like a wonderful opportunity.  Others may wonder if this would be a worthwhile use of resources as pulling teachers out of their classrooms for two days per lesson study is a huge commitment.  That’s a fair concern, so let me share why I found this process so valuable.

Think about how we learn.  It’s basically a repeated process of:

• doing something
• receiving and examining feedback
• adjusting what we do

This holds true whether it is learning to walk:

• take a big step
• oops, I fell because I lost my balance
• take a smaller step

or learning to teach:

• ask a question
• oops, few people responded because I asked a yes/no question
• ask the question again as a “how?” question

This is what lesson study is all about.  When you are in your own classroom teaching, you collect feedback based on what you see and hear.  You’re just one person though.  For all that you know, there is so much more you can’t possibly know because there are so many children in a classroom.  What if you could have more eyes and ears observing how children learn?  You would get such great feedback that accomplishing your goals would happen more quickly.  Who wouldn’t want that?

So, with that in mind, let me share many of the lessons learned.

• Be very thoughtful about how the groups of educators are formed.  Initially we tried to make groups that were comprised of teachers from the same grade level at the same school site.  When that wasn’t possible, we then tried to make groups from the same grade level at different school sites.  While we had great intentions, sometimes the groups were not ideal for the educators in them.  Ultimately what we realized was that the most important thing was that the group members felt comfortable with each other, and that was more important than their grade level or site.
• One issue (that we really learned the hard way) was the importance of making sure that each group had a mentor during the lesson planning process that would also be there on the day of the lesson.  To explain why this is a big deal, let me tell you the story about my very first lesson study where I wound up making teachers cry.  At first, we let groups plan the lessons on their own.  Then, on the day of the lesson we would go over what they created.  The problem was that teachers may not have felt fully comfortable with the content of their own lesson.  So, during this particular lesson study, the first teacher ran into trouble and asked me to finish the lesson.  When the group debriefed, it became clear that they incorporated activities because they thought they had to and didn’t understand how they fit in.  So, I (very naively) suggested some changes that could be made to the lesson to make it clearer.  The teacher who had already taught the lesson thought they were good, but the teachers who had to teach the lesson next were now being forced to teach an almost completely unfamiliar lesson!  They were so stressed out that I also had to finish the second lesson. By the final debrief, it was a complete mess with crying and all.  Two lessons learned that day included:
  • a mentor has to work with the group during the lesson creation and stay for the lesson study day to ensure that everyone is comfortable with all aspects of the lesson.
  • it is better to just stop the lesson study if it ever gets to the point that people are that uncomfortable.
• Wait as long as possible to decide who will teach a lesson.  At one point we were deciding who would teach a lesson on the day we created it.  Sadly, once this was known by the group, people’s effort levels changed.  Those who knew they would not be teaching felt less of a need to produce a quality lesson while those who know that they would be teaching the lesson felt that much more stress.  Ultimately we made the choice to decide who would teach the lesson on the morning of the lesson.  This kept everyone invested in the process.
• UPDATE (11/10/18) – As I continue to do lesson studies, a situation came up that helped me learn another lesson.  Apparently, after a round of lesson study was over, rumors started going around about how students in one of the classes we taught a lesson in were doing something they shouldn’t have done.  This made the the teacher of those students uncomfortable as it came across as a negative reflection of her.  These rumors were both unexpected and unacceptable.  As a result, going forward I am now making a rule explicit that I had assumed everyone understood.  That rule is, “What happens in lesson study, stays in lesson study.”  Participants have to feel safe around one another and if that safety is lost, don’t bother doing lesson study.
• UPDATE (11/26/18) – In some recent rounds of lesson study, the same teacher (me) taught both lessons. I was initially concerned that this might make people check out since they did not have to teach the lesson or that the focus might shift away from the lesson. Neither of those things happened, but one interesting did occur. As I see Lesson Study as a type of experiment, by having the same teacher teach the lesson both times, it controlled for another variable. Often when two different teachers teach a lesson, they will teach it slightly differently and it is another thing to wonder about why lessons went differently. So, this wound up being somewhat beneficial.
• UPDATE (11/26/18) – I’ve found it to be worthwhile to begin by reviewing the potential reasons why we are using a problem in a lesson. This conversation is very important in calibrating everyone in the room. We also make sure that anyone who stops by to observe also understands our reason why.

• It is critical that observers do not interact with students in any way.  A lesson study is like an experiment.  You are testing out whether the strategies you are implementing are as effective as you hoped.  When you intervene, you have contaminated the experiment.  Now, when the student you are observing does well, you won’t be able to determine whether it was because of your intervention or because of the lesson.
• Observers should stay in one specific location and watch the same students throughout the entire lesson.  This may seem counterintuitive.  After all, how will you know how the other students did?  What we found was that when observers walked around the room, they wound up with very superficial understandings of how students learned because they never saw how any one student thought through the entire problem.  Accordingly, this is why groups of 4 to 6 educators worked well because while one of them was teaching the lesson, the other 3 to 5 educators and the facilitator (often me) were able to capture how 4 to 6 groups of students experienced the lesson.
• One disturbing trend we started to realize is that we often had little to no evidence of student learning.  Specifically, there were many instances where students we observed said nothing and wrote down no words.  Perhaps they calculated something, but we had almost no idea as to how they reasoned about the mathematics.  These were very profound moments for us because it made recording useful feedback nearly impossible and we had to adjust our lessons to give students more opportunities to speak and write out their understandings.
• While lesson studies are supposed to be solely about studying the lesson and how students respond to it, the reality is that the person teaching the lesson inevitably feels under the spotlight.  Theoretically, any of the group members should be able to teach it as all were involved in creating it and lesson study should have nothing to do with who teaches it.  That being said, the person who does teach it will feel vulnerable and it is important to make sure that teacher feels safe.
• One issue that frequently came up was how to incorporate outside observers (such as administrators) who were not a part of the process of creating the lesson.  The administrator might come for some portion of the lesson and/or debrief.  While their presence was valued, they could also easily derail things, depending on what they did.  For example, sometimes they would come in and interact with students during the lesson (which I already discussed as problematic).  Or, they might make a comment during the debrief (without having the complete picture) that could make the person who taught the lesson feel even more vulnerable and defensive.  So, we eventually learned that one of the facilitator’s jobs was to make sure that any visitor was quickly brought up to speed about the group norms.  Additionally, during the debrief, visitors remained observers and were not allowed to share their observations until after group members fully debriefed the lesson.

• When observers are taking notes, make sure they include the time or specific lesson markers.  That way when the facilitator debriefs the lesson, she can talk about it in segments such as “Let’s talk about the Warm Up” or “What did you observe during problem 2?”  Without these markers, it’s hard to determine which parts of their notes correspond with which parts of the lesson.
• Each observer’s perspective on the lesson’s effectiveness will be greatly influenced by the students he or she observed.  For example, it was common to see two observers have very different views about a lesson’s effectiveness because one sat next to a group of struggling students who were lost while the other observer sat next to some strong students who excelled.  This is not a big deal, as having more observers will put everything in perspective, but it needs to be taken into consideration when deciding on lesson modifications.
• One minor detail that occasionally became a major problem was lunch on the day of the lesson study.  Initially we would all go out to lunch. At first it was just a casual lunch and we debriefed separately.  Eventually we merged the two and debriefed the first lesson during lunch. While this was fun, significant time was spent traveling and the restaurant’s environment was often not conducive to debriefing.  We were also late to start the second lesson on more than one occasion.  As a result, we ultimately decided to order our food ahead of time.  We actually found a sandwich shop where we could fax in our order days in advance and it would be automatically delivered to the school site so we could eat and debrief more efficiently.  Obviously, everyone bringing their lunch is also an option, but we found that it took time for people to go and prepare their food, which delayed our debriefing.

• Lesson study became a great source of ideas for professional development.  For example, teachers often realized that they could have asked better questions that would have encouraged students to explain their reasoning.  However, it was much easier to realize this after the lesson than during the lesson.  This is where the Questioning Scenarios activity came from.  It was designed to give teachers more practice at asking questions so that we could get students to share their understandings, collect better feedback, and adjust the lesson accordingly.
• One example of a subtle but hugely important modification made during a lesson study came from a problem on whether we have enough paint to paint a handball wall.  For the first lesson we asked students “Do we have enough paint to paint the handball wall?”  This resulted in many students listing “Yes” or “No” and not much else.  This was not what we had hoped for, so for the second lesson we modified the question to “How can we tell if we have enough paint to paint the handball wall?”  It seems like a minor tweak, but it resulted in significant increases in students articulating their reasoning.

I hope that these reflections have been useful for you.  If you’ve done lesson study, how do these experiences compare to your own?  If you’re going to be doing lesson study and you have a question about something I didn’t cover, please let me know in the comments.