Cross-cultural study on the lesson study: case studies from pre-service teachers in Japan and Thailand

Speaker: Toru Hayata, Naruto University of Education

Abstract: 

In this seminar, we would like to share our ongoing project of international comparison of lesson study.
Our cross-cultural study consisted of two stages: the first stage investigated cultural specificities and commonalities within a country (Japan), and the second stage compared such characteristics between different countries (Japan and Thailand).
In this presentation, we mainly aim to report the results of the first stage of the project, which utilised case studies to characterise Japanese pre-service teachers’ para-didactic praxeologies in mathematics lesson design. In particular, we analysed the lessons designed by five (four Japanese teams and one Thai team) teams of teachers, and their designing process itself  and focused on differences in their logos blocks. The analysis of the five teams showed that their mathematical praxeologies were almost the same, but their didactic praxeologies were very different. Although the praxis of their specific praxeology differed, Japanese participants' theory was based on semi-structured problem-solving.