Lesson Study: теория и практика применения Пит Дадли

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1. Why conduct a Lesson Study?
Panel 1.
Lesson Study works .. because it helps teachers to:
• see pupil learning occurring in much sharper detail than is usually possible
• see the gaps between what they had assumed was happening when pupils learned 
and what it actually happening
• find out how to plan learning which is better matched to the pupils’ needs as a 
result
• do all this in the context of a supportive teaching and learning community which 
is strongly committed to helping pupils to learn and to the professional learning 
of the members of the group. (Dudley, P. 2011a)
• Take these abilities into their teaching
Dudley, P (2011) Lesson Study: what it is, how and why it works and who isc using it, 
www.teachingexpertise.com
The simple fact is that successful teachers are largely blind to much – perhaps even to
most - of what of what is happening in their classrooms. This is not a failing! It is the
result of processes that have enabled them to become successful teachers.
I will explain what I mean. Classrooms are amongst the most complex working
environments in which any professionals have to operate. The amount of information
that is generated by 30 or more learners engaged in lesson activities over the course of
an hour or so is vast. So is the speed at which the information comes at a teacher; in
fact the Japanese say that ‘a lesson is like a swiftly flowing river’ (Lewis 1999).
Researchers have studied how teachers cope with this complexity and speed. Wragg et
al., (1996) found that teachers who survive their first three years and become good
teachers do so because every time they discover a new way of managing a teaching
situation that has presented a challenge to them, they rapidly internalise the practice
knowledge they gain in a form that can be drawn upon unconsciously when it is next
needed in the classroom. Practice knowledge in this form is not something a teacher is
often conscious of knowing. It is tacit. Like our knowledge of how to ride a bicycle, it only
manifests itself when it is needed and it is very difficult to put into words.
Unlike surgeons for example whose practice knowledge is recorded in great detail and
made accessible to others and replicable, teacher practice knowledge tends to stay with
the teacher who discovered it and who is usually unconscious of its existence. Because
teachers tend to practice in isolation as lone professionals with their classes, other
teachers seldom get an opportunity to see others’ tacit knowledge manifested in action.
When a teacher’s practice is observed by another professional it is more likely to be in
the context of some form of appraisal or judgement of performance than in a context of
professional learning and in such contexts teachers tend to play safe with the practices

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they put on view.
Unlike most animals, human beings have learned to deal with high volumes of
information by filtering. For example, we actively pay attention to a tiny proportion of the
sounds that we technically ‘hear’. We have evolved methods of filtering out extraneous
information and paying attention only to what is important or very unexpected. These
filtering mechanisms have enabled us to focus on and process what we have identified
as important in achieving our goal. In the classroom, we do the same. We focus on the
most critically important aspects of what is happening at any one time filtering out a lot of
extraneous events and information. We deal swiftly with new knowledge gained that we
have deemed important by storing it immediately in tacit form. All this leaves our
conscious working memory freer to deal with the next important things we have
prioritised in the complex and swift environment of the lesson.
Lesson Study helps experienced as well as inexperienced teachers to learn. Because,
through the processes of joint planning, joint observation, joint analysis we have to
imagine learning together, we get to see aspects of pupil learning through the eyes of
others as well as our own and we compare actual learning observed in the research
lesson with the learning we imagined when we planned it. This forces us to become
conscious of things we would normally not be conscious of either because we would
filter it out or because it would be dealt with through our tacit knowledge system.
Many people who have used Lesson Study have said that focusing on and thus
becoming more aware of the learning needs and behaviours of individual case pupils
somehow makes them more aware of the individuality of all their pupils. So instead of
teaching to a ‘middle’ with groups of high and lower achieving pupils on either side,
Lesson Study helps teachers to be more aware of the needs of individuals in their
subsequent teaching but seemingly without being overwhelmed by the experience.
My research (Dudley, 2011b) indicates that this may be as a result of the fact that the
reflexive, recursive and collaborative experience of Lesson Study helps the experienced
teacher, a teacher who successfully utilises her ability to filter complex classroom
information, to select some of these filters and to switch them off. This allows, in a
controlled way, aspects of classroom information that relate to the pupil learning in
focus, to become visible that would otherwise have been filtered out. Lesson Study
seems to help teachers to learn how to switch these filters off when all their prior
experience has taught them that success lies in switching them on.

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