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This study seeks to understand the factors and orientations that are relevant to preservice teachers' (PSTs) beliefs about their ability to design lessons for inquiry-based K-6 social studies instruction.

Seventy elementary PSTs participated in a series of inquiry-based learning activities in a social studies methods course. The study uses exploratory factor analysis, a quantitative method to explore teacher self-reported efficacy for designing inquiry lessons.

The findings revealed that three capabilities related to design are relevant to elementary social studies PSTs' self-efficacy for designing inquiries: lesson design competence, lesson design disposition and lesson design practices. Most PSTs expressed low self-efficacy in all three capabilities. PSTs with a higher disposition for designing inquiry lessons may show a strong sense of self-efficacy for inquiry-based curricula design and practice in elementary social studies education.

The article discusses the importance of understanding PSTs sense of efficacy and categories of such self-efficacy beliefs at the level of lesson design within the context of teacher education. It discusses the need for teacher educators to facilitate educationally sound critical reflection on lesson design skills, disposition and practices that foster PSTs' sense of ability to teach via inquiry in elementary classrooms.

This study aims to understand how graduate students in a maker education course discuss beliefs about making and implement these beliefs as pedagogy in their curricular designs.

Interview transcripts from seven students were analyzed thematically for conceptions of making and learning. Lesson plans were also coded for elements of making, and the authors compared students’ articulated ideas about making with the practical implementation of making in their designs.

Students reflected on the nature of making and the possible benefits and tensions surrounding the use of making for learning. Multiple students discussed benefits for their future learning and careers. Comparisons between interview and lesson plans highlight both successful alignments and key gaps in the application of making principles, including struggles that students encountered when translating their beliefs about making into real-world pedagogy.

Given the limited sample size, future research should explore the extent to which educators in other contexts encounter similar or different obstacles in their development of maker-focused pedagogies.

Findings can be used to inform future maker education courses to better support students in successfully translating core principles of making from general beliefs into effective and practical pedagogical strategies.

Despite widespread interest in combining making with educational spaces, much remains to be understood about the strategies that educators use to integrate elements of making into their pedagogy. This study contributes discussions of the benefits and tensions that maker educators may encounter when blending tenets of making with the needs of formal education.

The purpose of this paper is to address two questions: Can student teachers use variation theory to design and review lessons? Can exposure to variation in designs for lessons with the same intended object of learning develop student teachers understanding of design?

The student teachers were undertaking an English‐medium education degree, a feature of which was peer teaching, with the teachers collaborating planning, teaching and reflecting on lessons. A sample of individual student teachers’ written reflections on the design and effect of 15 lessons involving seven objects of learning was collected and analysed using a comparative method. The lesson designs in terms of the pattern of variation and critical aspects afforded, and the teachers’ evaluations of the lessons, are described.

Four critical cases show how variation in the enacted object of learning created by the student teachers in their lessons, and in the lived object of learning of their students, impacted on the lived object of learning to teach of those student teachers. In the design and enactment of their lessons, student teachers used variation to effect in ten out of 15 lessons taught.

The use of the variation framework appeared to be successful in varying what had previously been invariant for many student teachers, who had themselves been educated in teacher‐centric classrooms. Its use offered a systematic, evidence‐based approach to designing, teaching and reviewing lessons, and, therefore, an opportunity to integrate the roles of teacher and learner in pursuit of the object of learning. By specifying the variation framework as a design tool, and not a method of teaching, the opportunity is opened up for further critical investigation of its usefulness in initial teacher education.

This article aims to explore, by drawing on, and coordinating and combining Cultural Historical Activity Theory and Community of Practice theoretical perspectives, what we might learn about how to design for Lesson Study that best supports both collective and individual learning.

The article primarily makes a theoretical contribution. It does, however, draw on, and is informed by, the design of a large-scale study that sought to improve teaching and learning in mathematics with the particular aim of improving grades of post-16 learners in national examinations in England. Lesson Study was central to the designed intervention and such design is explored from the two theoretical perspectives.

Theoretical analysis suggests how the careful design of Lesson Study can facilitate both individual and collective learning in terms of the theories networked here. In particular, it is suggested that supporting collective learning requires careful attention to how “disturbances” in activity systems need to be designed for rather than being left to chance and how architectures that can support individual learning in terms of identity development should pay attention to supporting emerging practices as well as defining what is non-negotiable.

The article takes a novel approach by coordinating and combining two different, and well established, theoretical approaches, which, significantly, are used quite widely in social science research. Together they provide a rich view of learning at both individual and collective levels and suggest ways in which we might better support design for Lesson Study.

This study aims to present a high-end lesson study (HELS) model to develop students' subject competency. Data were collected from a Beijing suburban key senior high school in China. How the subject competency framework (SCF) supports HELS and develops students' subject competency in practice are discussed in this study.

This study provides a four-dimensional SCF developed by the chemistry education research team at Beijing Normal University. Basic procedures of the HELS model involve the project plan, students' pre-test, lesson design workshop, first-round teaching implementation and improvement, second-round teaching implementation and evaluation, students' post-test, and results discussion. Data were collected from each of the procedures, and analysis of the data is conducted in both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

The results show that the SCF supports HELS implementation by (1) identifying key teaching objectives based on curriculum standard requirements and students' subject competency performance; (2) organizing teaching content based on the core knowledge to develop cognitive mode; (3) designing tasks and activities regarding understanding–applying–transferring and innovating categories and sub-categories of SCF; (4) establishing students' cognitive perspectives and reasoning paths to promote their subject competency by teacher–student interaction.

The HELS model provides theory-based pedagogical guidance for conducting lesson studies. It presents the SCF and orientation. The SCF is used throughout the entire process of HELS, including the identification of teaching objectives, the selection and organization of teaching content, and the design and implementation of teaching activities. It reflects a systematic instructional design–implementation–discussion–improvement–evaluation process. The SCF-based HELS can be applied to different topics and disciplines.

The purpose of this study is to examine student perceptions of flipped learning lessons designed to teach information literacy skills.

A mixed-method design was implemented using a paper-based survey and an online focus group. The survey asked questions about the participants’ perceptions of the flipped lessons. The focus group was used to clarify the participants’ responses to the survey questions.

A majority of the students enjoyed completing the lessons. Responses also indicated that a majority of the students felt that the lessons helped them prepare for class. However, issues with computers and internet connectivity at home resulted in some of the students completing the lessons before or after school.

This study was limited to a class of 21 students enrolled in a public school in North Texas.

There is limited research supporting the value of flipped learning in relation to the technology implementation role of school librarians. This study provides insights into how school librarians can develop flipped learning lessons in collaboration with classroom teachers to improve the information literacy skills of students.

Despite numerous kinds of research regarding the potential of lesson study (LS) in internship and microteaching in teacher education curricula, studies examining the adaptation of LS in the lesson planning (LP) course have not been established. To fill this gap, this study aims to explore the perceptions of pre-service biology teachers of an adapted LS in the LP course toward their instructional design skills and teaching competency.

This study opted for basic qualitative studies. The participants were eleven pre-service biology teachers in their third year who had already taken a LP course. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Collected data were then transcribed and thematically analyzed using grounded theory and focused on participants' perceptions about the development of their teaching competency in lesson planning through LS.

The findings revealed that participants appreciated the planning and consultation phases, teaching practice, peer observation as well as observer feedback from the reflection phase in supporting the development of their basic teaching skills. There was also a change in their perceptions related to the concept of teaching.

The findings of this study offer insight regarding the benefits and challenges of involving pre-service biology teacher students in the LS for biology teacher education programs with a focus on the method or LP course.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study of teacher learning through participation in sustained collaborative subject-based professional development groups supported by a facilitator, using a model of teachers’ conceptions of teaching developed from phenomenography to identify what are the critical features of teaching that must be present if teachers are to learn, and using a variation theory of learning to explain how they learn.

The groups engaged in cycles of lesson study action research to improve the learning outcomes of their students. The authors intended to engage the teachers in an exploration of their own and their students’ experiences to understand the relationship between the enactment of the research lesson(s) and the educational outcome. The authors collected over 157 hours of video recorded teachers’ meetings involving 15 groups, 47 hours of follow-up interviews and 97 hours of lessons. In this paper the authors report on the progress of one of those groups. The authors analysed the transcripts to see what, if any, dimensions of variation were opened in discussion, affording the opportunity for learning. The authors sought the simultaneous juxtaposition, the bringing together, of threads that have entered the discussion that have the potential to open dimensions of variation – to add critical features to the “what” and “how” dimensions of teaching.

The authors identified necessary conditions for teacher learning through collaborative subject-based professional development groups. Any member of the group might bring this about. The facilitator or coach might be expected to perform this role in the group, and to sustain the group’s attention on the critical features of the object of learning.

The paper provides valuable insights into strategies to change teacher perspectives from a transmission oriented to a construction oriented view of teaching in the face of new and challenging curriculum demands.

In the work reported here the authors have used variation theory to design lesson study. This is rather different from a learning study where the teachers engaged in the study use variation theory to design their research lesson(s). It is a learning study of teachers’ professional development.

This study explores how lesson study (LS) can enhance teacher candidates' ability to develop their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for teaching science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

A multiple case study design was undertaken using the social-constructivist paradigm. The authors explored similarities and differences within and among four cases of teacher candidates who collaborated with a cooperating teacher and a university mentor. The data were collected from field observations, post-lesson discussions and follow-up interviews; it was then content analyzed and validated using negative case analysis.

Learning from post-lesson discussions within their own LS clusters, including a teacher candidate, his/her cooperating teacher and university mentor, could help teacher candidates develop their PCK for STEM, rather than gain experience through several rounds of LS engagement. The foci of post-lesson discussions, which were discussed by each LS cluster the most, were students' context, teaching and STEM prototypes, while knowledge of instructional strategies for teaching STEM was mostly related to the previously mentioned foci. Teacher candidates' confidence in teaching STEM lessons seemed to improve when they designed and discussed the overall lessons with their LS clusters.

The STEM-specific LS model was proposed to support the exploration of the struggles and successes of student learning before designing the purpose of the LS and enacting its phases; the implementation of LS could be the tool for enhancing teacher candidates' PCK for STEM teaching.

The authors investigate the use and potential of a theoretical combination of Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) and the Theory of Didactic Situation (TDS) to support Lesson Study (LS) in upper secondary mathematics.

Case study performed by university researchers, based on theoretical analysis and case studies based on documents and observation from lesson studies.

Even within a project lasting just about three years, teachers (with no preliminary experience of lesson study) engaged in lesson design based on the combination of theoretical perspectives from TDS and RME in ways that confirm the potential of that combination to enrich and focus teachers' professional development within the framework of LS . It is not clear to what extent the intensive and continued engagement of university researchers has been or would be essential for similar and longitudinal realizations of these potentials.

As current European frameworks seek to engage researchers and teachers in collaboration and exchange across countries, networking of major paradigms of research (like TDS and RME) and uses of them as supports for teachers' inquiry (like demonstrated in this paper) is of considerable institutional interest and potential impact on schools.

Teachers' Inquiry in Mathematics Education (TIME) is a prerequisite for the development of Inquiry Based Mathematics Education, which in turn is required in many countries across the world, with the aim of fostering critical and competent citizens.

This combination of (major) mathematics education theories to support and enrich LS has not previously been investigated. While several aspects of adapting to LS Western contexts have been investigated in the past, including the inclusion of perspectives and tools from academic research, the role of university researchers is also quite open. While authors do not offer a systematic study of this role, authors examine how this role may involve development of new practical combinations of different, complementary theoretical tools, which indeed hold potential to support lesson study in a European context.