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The purpose of this paper is to examine practicing mathematics teachers’ learning through parallel lesson study in China. Lesson study in China has been practiced for decades. Parallel lesson is an enriched mode of lesson study to address the implementation of new curriculum.

The expansive learning perspective has been used to explore the ways practicing teachers learned to improve teaching through the transformation of learning objects and boundary crossing.

Two cases are illustrated and compared to highlight features of teachers’ learning through parallel lesson study. The practicing teachers developed their competence in transforming instructional objectives and task selection and implementation. In addition, they also developed professional vision in alignment with the reform-oriented curriculum.

This study makes significant contribution to understanding teachers’ learning through lesson study in China. Meanwhile, it also demonstrates how the theory of expansive learning could be used as a conceptual framework to examine teachers’ learning through lesson study.

Although CLS has been implemented in China for over a century, it is barely known to educators internationally. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the salient characteristics of Chinese lesson study (CLS), introduce the major themes of this special issue, and invite dialogues about the theories and practices of CLS.

The authors of this editorial paper conducted an extensive literature review on CLS, analyzed the contents and methods of the existing research categorically, compared CLS with other models of LS globally, and present this special issue articles and their major contributions thematically. The theoretical framework of the paper relies mainly on cultural theories and theories on research paradigms such as improvement science, which explain why and how CLS functions in Chinese education system over time.

Existing studies suggest that CLS is a deliberate practice for developing instructional expertise, a research methodology for linking research and practice, and an improvement science for instruction and school improvement system wide. In addition to the theorization of CLS, this special issue also introduces some adaptations of CLS outside of China such as the USA and Italy.

This paper, for the first time, spells out some salient features of CLS, and discusses issues in adapting CLS in other parts of the world. It will enrich the understanding of LS theories and practices in China and promotes trans-cultural development of LS internationally.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the processes that make teachers learn in a collaborative arrangement similar to lesson study (LS) and learning study (LearS). The teachers in this collaboration wanted to enhance teaching and student learning (grades 4-7) about decimal numbers.

The analysis is based on data from five teachers’ collaborative work in an adaptive arrangement of LS and LearS called subject didactic groups. Data consist of eight audio recordings of the teachers’ meetings as well as written and photographic documentation of the meetings. The analysis was carried out through the lens of expansive learning within an activity system (Engeström, 1987). This entailed a focus on contradictions between teachers’ ways of thinking and acting when individually and collaboratively developing their teaching, on the solutions to the conflicts produced by the teachers, and on how these challenged the teachers’ ideas about what the students need to learn.

The authors identified contradictions between formative and summative assessment, exams and stressed students, prevailing norms about teaching and the theoretical tool used for planning and analyzing lessons and student learning, and the local curriculum and time constraints. The solutions to the conflicts were the driving force for developing new and more qualitative knowledge about what the students need to learn.

This paper gives explicit examples of contradictions and solutions that can challenge and drive teachers to expand their learning in an adaptive form of LS and LearS suited to daily teaching.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to investigate the learning of individual teachers participating in lesson study collaboration by adapting a participatory framework about teacher learning; and second, to investigate the potential of this framework compared with other approaches used in lesson study research.

The authors use collective case studies. By being participant observers the authors provide detailed descriptions of two selected teachers’ lived experiences of lesson study collaboration. In addition to gain first-hand insights, the authors conducted interviews before, between and after two rounds of lesson studies, and recorded the various lesson study activities.

This paper provides empirical insights into the complexity of teacher learning. By using the participatory framework, the authors identify significant shifts in the participation of each of the two teachers during a two-year lesson study project. By comparing these shifts the authors identify significant conditions for their individual learning.

Although the study is small scale, both the insights into the different ways in which teachers participated and the theoretical insights might be valuable for other lesson study research approaches.

This paper provides valuable insights into conditions that might influence teachers’ participation in lesson study activities, especially in cultures with little experience of lesson study.

This paper fulfils a need to investigate individual teachers’ learning in lesson study collaborations. It also contributes to deeper theoretical understandings of teacher learning which have been called for in recent lesson study research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how teachers improve core instructional practices in teaching mathematics for problem solving through lesson study (LS). The core practices included launching a task, implementing a task, and orchestrating students’ solutions.

This study adopted multiple case study and survey methodologies. Each of three LS groups developed a research lesson on problem solving in algebra through Chinese LS, which includes collaborative planning and repeated teachings/debriefings of the research lesson with support from experts. The data collected included lesson plans, videotaped research lessons and debriefing meetings, and an end-of-project survey. Case studies supported by survey data were utilized to describe how research lessons were improved and what teachers learned from LS.

A fine-grained analysis of the data revealed that the participants improved their strategies for teaching for problem solving, which included effectively launching tasks, strategically implementing tasks, and productively orchestrating students’ solutions to the tasks. Further, analyses revealed that the feedback from experts during debriefing meetings played crucial roles in making these changes. Moreover, participants learned how to implement these core instructional practices and changed their views about students’ learning.

The study uncovers the mechanisms about how teachers improve teaching and their expertise in teaching through Chinese LS. The importance of the dynamic between repeated teaching and immediate feedback from knowledgeable others is highlighted.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the cultural roots of Chinese lesson study (LS) so as to account for its persistence in the Chinese education history as well as its importance in Chinese teacher professional development and student learning.

The overarching research question is: “How can Chinese lesson study be theorized from a cultural perspective?” The sub-questions include: “What cultural features do Chinese teachers demonstrate in their LS activities? How can traditional Chinese cultural resources be utilized in explaining the existence and development of these features?” Based on a close reading of firsthand classic texts on Chinese cultural thoughts and related literature, the researchers collected data from Chinese teachers’ LS activities, stimulated recall interviews and focus groups, and related documents. An analysis is conducted with interplay among the theoretical framework, the data, and the researchers’ personal insights.

The findings of the study include three aspects. First, in terms of their actions, the Chinese teachers enact their understanding of teaching in public lessons through unity of knowing and doing (知行合一) more than conceptual explication. Second, with regard to their thinking, the Chinese teachers use practical reasoning (实践推理) in deliberate practice of repeated teaching through group inquiry and reflection. Third, a tendency of emulating those better than oneself (见贤思齐) is evident in novice teachers’ learning from “good” examples by expert teachers.

The revelation of these cultural features can not only contribute to a deeper understanding about the persistence and importance of LS in the Chinese education history, but also provide an example of analyzing LS from a cultural perspective to the world LS community.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what professional knowledge and competence (PKC) that knowledgeable others, namely, mathematics teaching research specialists (MTRS) in China, need to know, and how they may develop their PKC.

This study adopts mixed methods. A survey on PKC with 549 MTRS is utilized to examine MTRS’ perceived held and ideal PKC and perceived effective ways of developing their PKC. The responses to the open-ended questions on the survey were used to identify additional dimensions of PKC and ways of developing PKC. Multiple techniques of quantitative data analysis were employed to feature the characteristics of PKC and structure of the survey, and the relationship between background variables and perception of PKC. Collectively, this study paints a rich and comprehensive picture about Chinese knowledgeable others’ knowledge and competence, and its development.

The data analysis reveals that the participants appreciated the six-dimension model of MTRS’ PKC. They were confident with their PKC in general, but varied in different aspects. The factor analysis showed the six-dimension model could be further clustered into two components: knowledge about mathematics teaching and learning and competence in mentoring and educational leadership, and knowledge about content, assessing student learning, and use of technology. The participants perceived their learning through multiple ways including: learning through reading, attending specific training programs, attending and mentoring teaching research activities both school-based and across regions, observing and debriefing lessons, sharing within online learning communities. All these venues jointly contribute to developing MTRS’ PKC.

This is the first empirical study on MTRS’ PKC and its development in China based on such a large sample. The findings of this study not only contribute to an understanding of knowledgeable others in Chinese lesson study and providing suggestions for support of their development, but also provide implications for studies of practice-based mathematics teacher-educators globally.

The purpose of this paper is to study an adapted version of lesson used with mentors and student-teachers in a one-year initial teacher education (ITE) programme for prospective teachers of geography and modern languages. In partnership with eight secondary schools, the effectiveness of the lesson study cycle was evaluated as a vehicle for exploration of approaches to aid student-teacher learning during school placements.

In total, 12 lesson study case studies were completed and analysed.

Three principal findings emerged: first, most collaborating mentors and student-teachers reported that they engaged in a reflexive process, exploring the complexity of teaching, each learning more about the characteristics of teaching; second, in cases where collaboration allowed student-teachers a degree of autonomy, lesson study provided a collaborative scaffold for understanding the complexity of teaching, contributing to professional development along a continuum which the authors tentatively term “pedagogic literacy”; third and less positively, some mentors struggled to shed the shackles of traditional roles, dominating the discourse as advice-givers so that a traditional “parallel” approach to mentoring continued.

The work expands the experiential base of lesson study efforts in ITE in the UK and elaborates a view of teacher learning that challenges reductive approaches to the preparation of new teachers. For the first time, it presents student-teacher and mentor perspectives on the use of lesson study in teaching practice in England.