The functions of lesson study in mathematics teacher induction

The project falls within mathematics education and concerns mathematics teacher knowledge and its development in the transition between education and practice.

The main questions address the extent and ways in which lesson study may contribute to these. The wider aim is to achieve knowledge which may help to enhance practice in teacher education and induction.

The project is conducted in a cooperation between Carl Winsløw, the Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen, and Takeshi Miyakawa, University of Michigan and Joetsu U. and is co-funded by JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science).

Project duration: 2007-2011

Brief project description

A recurrent and crucial theme in research on teacher education is the relation between preservice teacher education, and the day-to-day practice of mathematics teachers in school. This relation appears already when preservice teachers are engaged in practice periods which in many cases form part of their teacher education. But it appears also, and perhaps primarily, in the experiences of teachers in the first years after completing teacher education.

The first years of teaching practice may indeed be viewed as a period of transition at several interrelated levels:

• As an epistemological transition, e.g. when it appears necessary to adapt the (sometimes quite ‘academic') forms of knowledge acquired in pre-service education to the conditions and requirements of teaching,
• As an institutional transition, from one institutional context (e.g. a university) to another one (a school, usually within a wider system of schools), often with quite different norms and other cultural assets,
• As a personal transition, from being a student in a community of students, to being a professional in a community of teachers. This clearly depends on the previous aspects but also on more contingent conditions and personal beliefs.

It is the aim of this project to investigate the functionings of  "lesson study" * along these axes of the transition, especially the first one. We wish to document and analyse specific instances of how lesson study affects the development and contents of mathematics teachers' knowledge in early stages of their career. 

[*Lesson study is a format for teacher led didactical engineering which has its origin in Japan, where it is a normal part of teaechers' work throughout their careers; lesson study has gained considerable popularity in other countries, such as the USA.]