Saratha Sithamparam – författare

A unique feature of this book is its focus on engaging teachers themselves in changing teaching as a way to bring about teacher change through lesson study and learning study. The sequence – changing teaching, changing teachers – is significant. This approach to professional development is not about telling teachers what and how they should teach to bring about change in their students’ learning outcomes. It is about empowering teachers to make their own decisions about what needs to change. Empowering teachers in this way has been identified as the ‘soul’ of Japanese lesson study (Cheng, 2019). It is the soul which can so easily be compromised when lesson study is adopted and – inevitably it seems – adapted in new contexts around the globe. Without teacher empowerment, top-down curriculum development is almost bound to fail. In presenting the cases of collaborative professional development included in this book, care has been taken to include the teachers’ voices. They are intended to be the subjects and not the objects of our research into teachers’ professional development.

A unique feature of this book is its focus on engaging teachers themselves in changing teaching as a way to bring about teacher change through lesson study and learning study. The sequence – changing teaching, changing teachers – is significant. This approach to professional development is not about telling teachers what and how they should teach to bring about change in their students’ learning outcomes. It is about empowering teachers to make their own decisions about what needs to change. Empowering teachers in this way has been identified as the ‘soul’ of Japanese lesson study (Cheng, 2019). It is the soul which can so easily be compromised when lesson study is adopted and – inevitably it seems – adapted in new contexts around the globe. Without teacher empowerment, top-down curriculum development is almost bound to fail. In presenting the cases of collaborative professional development included in this book, care has been taken to include the teachers’ voices. They are intended to be the subjects and not the objects of our research into teachers’ professional development.

The best professional development for teachers focuses on issues they encounter in the classroom. It is collaborative, school-based, learning-focused and supports teachers in solving problems of pedagogy in context. Through lesson study teachers are empowered to make decisions to improve pedagogy, curriculum and assessment based on evidence of the effect of design on learning.

Being explicit about the theories of learning underpinning their teaching decisions allows teachers to develop a shared vocabulary for the diagnosis of learning problems, redesign and evaluation of learning situations. Learning study introduces a new Variation Theory of Learning. It provides a framework for teachers to make critical decisions about what is to be learnt and how.

The fusion of lesson and learning study is changing the nature of professional development and providing teachers with a voice in the field of educational research. In Realising Learning, teachers, teacher educators and policy makers can share the progress achieved by teachers in Asia and Europe to improve teaching and learning.