A US-Japan lesson study collaboration reveals critical lenses for examining practice

Strong claims have been made about the potential of lesson study, a Japanese form of professional development in which teachers collaboratively plan and examine actual lessons. We have explored these claims by asking a group of US teachers to engage in lesson study with the support of Japanese teachers. Our findings suggest that to benefit from lesson study teachers will first need to learn how to apply critical lenses to their examination of lessons: We describe three such lenses (e.g. the researcher lens) and their role in making lesson study powerful. We also discuss the implications of these findings for other professional development efforts in which teachers attempt to learn from concrete examples of practice. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.