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The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction of the papers in the current issue.

By revealing contrasting features of alternative theories of learning, this paper offers a contribution to the on-going discussion about the role of learning theory in Japanese lesson study and its global adaptations.

Attempts to theorize lesson study in contrast to the theory-based learning study reveal a fundamental difference in the learning theories used to underpin this task related to the different world views on which they are founded.

This paper review provides an overview of the insights into lesson and learning studies provided by the authors in this issue of the journal.

The purpose of this paper is to examine variations within lesson study (LS) practices and their connections with related traditions: teacher research/enquiry approaches, professional development models, professional learning communities and group problem-solving approaches. Questions are addressed about the relationships between different professional learning approaches in terms of definitions and frameworks.

Academic databases and website sources were searched in a purposive way to identify 20 practices associated with these traditions for comparative analysis.

A conceptual framework consisting of eight dimensions was constructed to account for the variations within and between these professional learning traditions: for instance, about the settings in which the practices take place, the purposes of the practices and the specific procedures involved. By illustrating how specific practices fitted within this framework it is concluded that the variations within the LS tradition are wide enough to make it difficult to identify a set of necessary and sufficient features of LS to distinguish LS practices from the other non-LS professional learning practices. Reasons are also given for considering whether a polythetic type of definition of professional learning/development practices might be constructed.

The possibility for a more systematic review of professional learning approaches for the construction of a conceptual framework is discussed.

Ways in which this kind of conceptualisation can be useful in promoting clarity about professional learning practices and in developing these practices are discussed.

The originality of this paper lies in the construction of a conceptual framework to analyse similarities and differences within and between various professional learning traditions.

The purpose of this study is to examine what teachers notice in their own enactment of eight high leverage practices as well as the patterns of interactions between the teachers and their peers when participating in video-based lesson study.

Each teacher taught and uploaded video from one lesson to a platform, which allowed video annotation, for their lesson study team. There were nine lesson study teams. This study used a qualitative design to examine the teachers' comments on their own videos as well as the patterns in the comments between peers on lesson study teams.

Teachers noticed both positive instantiations as well as opportunities for growth in their enactment of: using and connecting mathematical representations, posing purposeful questions and supporting students' productive struggle. Analysis displayed a pattern of exchanges where peers coached, validated, empathized and pushed each other beyond their comfort zone as critical peers.

Although not all lesson study teams were made up of school-based teams and the teachers shared short recordings of their teaching, this research contributes to the understanding of how adapting lesson study by using video can help teachers notice their instantiation of teaching practices and peers can support and push one another towards ambitious instruction. Future research could extend this work by investigating the impact of video-based lesson study on teachers in isolated areas who may not have professional learning networks.

Video-based LS may help to overcome barriers to the implementation of lesson study, such as the challenge of scheduling a common release time for lesson observation and the financial burden of funding substitute teachers for release time.

The current realities of COVID-19 creates an opportunity for mathematics educators to reimagine teacher professional development (PD) in ways that push the field forward. In light of this disruption, the authors propose an innovative model of utilizing video-based Lesson Study (LS; Lewis, 2002) with peer coaching to offer PD opportunities with methodological considerations for both mathematics researchers and teacher practitioners. The authors document and analyze a collection of online LSs that were taught by a focal teacher and recorded for the peers in the LS group. Video-based LS PD structure allowed the authors to examine how they can leverage this online model of LS to analyze student thinking and learn about teaching rich tasks in an online environment using eight teaching practices. Through their paper the authors will detail the necessary features of online LS specifically using a video annotation tool like Goreact and how video can be used to enhance the professional learning of the mathematics teaching practices (MTPs; NCTM, 2014) and the noticing of student thinking (Jacobs et al., 2010; Sherin and van Es, 2009; van Es and Sherin, 2002, 2008). In addition, the authors will document the norms that were established in the online LS community that impacted collaboration of LS teams and developed strong peer coaching relationships. The online LS PD design also supports collaboration of teachers from varying contexts, promotes professional growth and demonstrates how educators might leverage peer coaches as social capital within their schools to develop teachers along the professional continuum.

The purpose of this study was to better understand how lesson study (LS) impacts the pedagogy and attitudes of teachers in varied sociocultural contexts. The authors investigated responses of teachers in Kenya and the USA who were new to LS.

Teacher interviews after LS were qualitatively and inductively analyzed with Teacher Education and Development Study: Learning to Teach Mathematics as a conceptual/analytical framework.

Results varied between Kenyan and US teachers. Kenyan teachers reported increases in content and pedagogical content knowledge. They suggested participating in LS was an enjoyable, productive struggle and emphasized the value of planning for lessons and the role of the outside expert. US teachers described consideration of students' needs, abilities, and learning strategies. They described LS as a positive experience, even though making time for the process was challenging. Procedurally, US teachers valued research and collaboration. Although both the process and responses differed, US and Kenyan teachers' reflections highlight affordances of LS.

This study is a small-scale, comparative case study. Future research could ask similar research questions in other contexts and with greater numbers of participants.

Views of teaching and learning and typical structures for teachers' professional learning vary by context; these factors should be considered when planning and implementing LS.

The study responds to an identified need to learn more about how LS contributes to teachers’ different views of teaching and learning, which are embedded in various sociocultural settings.

Research and practice are often seen as separate entities, however, the notion of teacher as researcher situates the act of teaching as research (Watanabe, 2018). Educators in Japan identify as researchers with contributions to make to the field. Lesson study is one vehicle for their research. The purpose of this paper is to understand whether educators outside Japan are sharing their work resulting from lesson study to impact the field beyond their local context.

Databases were searched to find cases (n=45) of lesson study in K-12 mathematics classrooms in the USA. Descriptions of how lesson study was implemented were coded to determine whether sharing of findings was a part of the lesson study cycle and, if so, to identify the mechanisms for sharing.

In 12 of the 45 cases, there was evidence that the lesson study team shared their findings beyond the team. The modes of sharing included inviting people to the research lesson, distributing the research lesson, presenting at conferences or writing articles.

The cases are limited to published lesson study projects. The end of the lesson study cycle for teams not sharing was not evaluated.

Ways to make sharing results more accessible are discussed.

The originality of this paper is in that it evaluates a large number of documented cases of lesson study to understand if and how teachers are making their professional knowledge gained through lesson study public.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of processes in operation during the implementation of a reform programme in Kazakhstan culminating in the widespread adoption of Lesson Study (LS).

The study is positioned within a critical realist theoretical perspective, drawing on Archer’s social theory to focus on the social world of the school while changes to classroom practice are being made. This is a case study using process tracing methods to analyse how school actions and interactions are used during the change process resulting in widespread implementation of LS.

Three key mechanisms for implementing the structural changes are identified; increasing teacher’s pedagogical knowledge, collaborative working structures and active collective inquiry. The capacity to change practice is underpinned by reflection on classroom interactions and in having the necessary skills and available time to analyse the effect on pupils’ learning. Engaging in reflexive deliberation is dependent on having access to new knowledge, together with the opportunity to collaborate in supportive groups.

This study provides an insight into what changes were made and why these support the spread of LS in Kazakhstan, drawing on Archer’s social theory and using theory building process tracing methods to delve deeper into the empirical fingerprints left during the intervention. LS is an important structural factor which is still supporting change in Kazakhstani classrooms.

Variation Theory has been used as a source of guiding principles for pedagogical design, lesson analysis and improvement in Learning Study (LS). The purpose of this paper is to argue that the LS approach provides an important opportunity for teachers and researchers not only to improve the teaching strategies together but also refine the Variation Theory in action.

A case study of teaching writing in Chinese at Primary 4 level of a LS project is selected using analysis of covariance to identify lessons that had significant differences in student learning outcomes. Analysis focuses on examining one of the major claims in Variation Theory which is that “contrast should precede generalization” in order to explore if this argument is able to provide a possible answer to the difference in student performance in the two classes of students of similar ability learning the same topic. Teachers’ contribution to the discussion of the application of the theory is analysed to explain the different teaching strategies chosen.

The case study shows that in a LS platform, teachers’ teaching act and their interaction with theorists contributed to a dual process of developing the practice as well as the theory itself. The results of students’ learning serve as evidences for the claim that “contrast should precede generalization” as the theory suggested.

Most of the lesson study and LS projects emphasize teachers’ learning through the participation in the process. This paper illustrates that in conducting LS approach, when there is conscious effort to direct discussion toward how to handle the content in terms of Variation Theory explicitly, the result could contribute to the development of the theory itself. Hence, the LS provides an important opportunity for teachers and researchers to refine strategies as well as theories of teaching and learning together.

It has been proposed that lesson study creates joint and sharable knowledge products in terms of lesson plans that could be used and developed by other teachers in other school contexts (Morris and Hiebert). The purpose of this paper is to report on a study with the aim of examining how such a knowledge product produced in a Hong Kong school could be communicated and appropriated by a group of Swedish teachers.

A report from a successful Learning Study – a revised version of lesson study, based on a theoretical framework of learning – was brought to a group of three teachers. On the basis of this report, they planned and conducted two lessons in their own classes. The analysis draws on data from three of six video recorded lessons and was framed within a variation theory perspective. The focus of the analysis was on the object of learning.

It was found that the Swedish teachers used the documented Hong Kong lessons as a resource. They adapted the insights gained by the Hong Kong teachers to the specific group of learners and other conditions in the Swedish context.

The article is a contribution to the discussion about teachers as knowledge producers (c.f. Stenhouse).

The purpose of this paper is to explore in what way gradually increasing teachers’ theory-based instruction affects the students’ learning outcomes, illustrated by the example of learning how to regulate body tension in the upper secondary school.

In total, 72 students from four classes participated in the study. The way the students were offered to understand “regulation of tension” was designed by variation theory, and the method used was learning study, an iterative process whereby the results from the first lesson are the basis for the design of the next implementation in a new group of students.

There is a significant increased learning outcome in all four lessons, but in Lesson D, where the highest increase (129 percent) was found, all students improved their results. The use of the theoretical framework had effect on the teachers to vary only the most important aspects in the instruction in the last cycle, where the features chiselled out during the study (e.g. heart rate, respiration, muscle tension) were contrasted more clearly, which had an impact on the students’ learning. Based on the theoretical framework, the teachers got more skilled at experiencing what should vary and what should be kept invariant in order to facilitate the students’ learning. In the last intervention, the teachers found one pattern of variation which was more powerful than the previous. In this one, the physical activities were kept invariant, but different responses of the sympathetic nervous system were contrasted, one at a time, to establish knowledge of different bodily responses to tension.

Learning study has mainly been used in subjects such as Mathematics or other theoretical issues but this paper describes in what way learning study can be used in PE. So second, the result of this study contributes to knowledge about how students’ learning outcome in PEH can increase by directing focus on an object of learning rather than actual learning activity. The object of learning in this study is to learn to regulate tenseness and the learning outcomes have been analyzed in the perspective of variation theory.