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Lesson study has become a popular approach for supporting the development of student-teachers within initial teacher education (ITE) programmes. In a short space of time, the original model of lesson study, originating in Japan, has been adapted to fit into the work contexts of different national systems and ITE provider structures. This chapter classifies the different emerging models of lesson study into three main groups, university and hybrid approaches, practicum approaches and heterodox approaches. Learning study is also considered, due to its developing popularity, as a practice development approach. Having outlined the different models of lesson study used in ITE, the authors go on to outline some of the main challenges and advantages of participating in lesson study which have been identified in the literature.

Learning to teach effectively is a complex enterprise, and many efforts have been made in order to conceptualise the challenging work of teaching by identifying fundamental teaching practices. Findings reported from structured literature reviews on lesson study have revealed that incorporating a lesson study approach in Initial Teacher Education is challenging. This chapter considers how lesson study might adapt fundamental teaching practices and make use of new tools to enhance lesson study as an approach for improving student-teachers’ teaching practice. The four tools discussed here are lesson study with given activities, practicing talk moves in lesson study, rehearsing research lessons and research lessons with time-outs. The authors argue that these activities are tools which can help student-teachers enhance their learning of the complex work of teaching when involved in lesson study cycles. To illustrate these approaches, we use examples from the teaching of mathematics.

In initial teacher education (ITE) there is interest in developing the use of lesson study as it is seen as a positive tool for aiding student-teachers in developing their pedagogic understanding and practice. However, there are often concerns about the potential sustainability of lesson study in teacher preparation programmes which are already very intensive, requiring a great deal of work from school-based mentors and university tutors as well as student-teachers. This intensity leads to a number of competing priorities and a belief that the time taken to complete lesson study projects is not sustainable in the long term. In this chapter the author discusses how a consideration of the complex nature of time can help reframe the issues of sustainability of lesson study projects in ITE contexts. A number of studies from the literature are used to exemplify how a consideration of how the amount of time needed to complete a project and the rhythms of the school year, can lead to the use of different approaches to lesson study which are sensitive to the timescapes of any given context.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the background for, the design of, and the implementation of Lesson Study in a teacher education program in Norway. Lesson Study was chosen as an intervention in an attempt to shift pre-service teachers’ focus from themselves to their pupils, attempting to strengthen their possibilities to learn more about the consequences of their instructional decisions for their pupils.

The study used a time-lagged experiment where one group of second year pre-service teachers took part in their three-week field practice as usual (business-as-usual-condition), and one group, the following year, took part in Lesson Study cycles during their three-week field practice period. The students were recruited from four subject areas in both conditions: Math, Physical Education, Science, and English.

The use of Lesson Study created more collaborative inquiry among the pre-service teachers. At its best, the pre-service teachers formulated research questions, took active part in observations, and used data (pupils’ work, interviews and observations) to inform their choices about how to create improved learning for their pupils.

The study is a small scale study due to the need to test before upscaling.

The paper includes a description of how Lesson Study was implemented in a Teacher Education Department, and this can be valuable information for others who are attempting the same.

This paper fulfills an identified need to learn more about pre-service teachers\ learning and lesson study in teacher education.

This chapter focusses on the role of reflective practices within initial teacher education courses and the context of the practicum and the role that school-based mentors have in helping student-teachers to learn the skills of ‘reading’ the classroom. It will also discuss how lesson study can support student-teachers and their school-based mentors in their collaborative planning, execution and discussions so that their reflections can be used to further their professional development. Finally, suggestions will be made to support the reflective development of student-teachers.

This chapter considers ways in which lesson study may be introduced and sustained within the school–university partnerships that already exist within an initial teacher education (ITE) course. In particular, the authors describe the challenges and opportunities associated with ITE lesson study partnerships and ways in which lesson study can deepen and even transform the nature of the school–university partnership. The authors draw on third-generation Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (Engeström, 2001) to highlight pre-service teachers’ roles as ‘boundary crossers’ between the activity system of the university ITE course and the activity system of the school department in which they are placed. The authors argue that pre-service teachers, despite their inexperience as teachers, have an important opportunity to introduce the practices of lesson study that they are learning about into the schools in which they are placed. They are also able to promote approaches to lesson planning and observation that support the values of the course and thus, through mentor development, strengthen the school–university partnership more widely than the specific lesson studies carried out. The authors outline three models for productive ITE lesson study partnerships, and argue that even a relatively small number of lesson study events throughout the school year can establish the beginnings of a transformation in the school culture away from a performative focus on evaluating the teacher and towards a more productive focus on school students’ learning. This, in turn, deepens the partnership between university and school by aligning both parties more closely around a shared focus on studying learning.

This chapter discusses the focus of learning in lesson study research in initial teacher education. Whose learning should be considered in lesson study cycles? The learning of the student-teachers, the learning of the pupils or both? Relevance theory implies that meaningful interaction develops as a consequence of the heuristic interplay between the communicative and the cognitive principles of relevance, that is, the dynamics of any given interaction create meaning as the interactional process unfolds and relevance is maximised. The participants in the interaction at hand will thus create the best solution in any given set of circumstances. They will subconsciously strive towards the most relevant outcome of their interaction, which equals maximisation of relevance irrespective of the quality of the outcome. This approach will be used to discuss the role of the student-teachers and the pupils in learning processes and lesson study cycles. The student-teachers influence the interactional process from the point of view of the communicative principle of relevance, and the pupils influence the interactional process from the point of view of the cognitive principle of relevance. These dynamics will also have a bearing on the unfolding of the lesson study cycle, and consequently imply that lesson study research should take into account the learning of both the student-teachers and the pupils from the point of view of collaborative learning and reflective practices.

This chapter focusses on the complexity of observation, considering its role in lesson study, following a broader discussion of how observation is generally understood in teaching contexts. The authors argue that lesson study observation is formative and should not be performative in focus. In lesson study cycles, observation is a process conducted among peers ideally in a spirit of mutual support and collaborative inquiry, seeking to find answers to pedagogic challenges rather than measuring the effectiveness of individual teachers.

This chapter seeks to explain how lesson study can contribute to the growth of teacher expertise, enabling the participants to work together to address the complexity of teaching and grow what we call ‘pedagogic literacy’, a holistic but incomplete glimpse of what it means to be a teacher. The model proposed is not complete and cannot be complete given the endless complexity of the classroom. Lesson study, we conclude, is a vehicle for enabling teachers to grow their understanding of teaching and learning, while drawing on a complex web of underpinning interconnected dimensions that teachers develop throughout the varied stages of their careers.