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Learning power is crucial in today's rapidly changing world, yet its application to teachers is under-explored. This study delved into the investigation of teacher learning power and examined how it matters in the relationship between teachers' experiences in lesson study and the adoption of constructivist pedagogy.

A cross-sectional survey of 226 elementary, junior high, and senior high school teachers in Taiwan was conducted, and the results were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The findings suggest that both participation in lesson study and teacher learning power were positively associated with the practice of constructivist pedagogy. Moreover, teacher learning power partially mediated the relationship between lesson study and constructivist pedagogy.

By incorporating the concept of teacher learning power and performing a mediation analysis to understand how it matters, this study has added to the expanding collection of works on lesson study explored from different perspectives and in various contexts.

The purpose of this study is to explore whether the insights gained by teachers in a learning study can be shared by others and used to enhance other students’ learning.

An exploratory study analysed how four Mathematics teachers implemented the knowledge gained about student learning from a learning study about decimal numbers in their teaching. The teachers enacted two lessons with different conditions in terms of the knowledge identified about student learning in a total of eight classes in the fifth and sixth grades.

The findings indicate that, when the teachers enacted the knowledge in their lessons, students’ learning improved significantly as compared to when only some parts of this knowledge were enacted.

This suggests that teachers can produce knowledge that is also usable for other teachers and that enables better possibilities for student learning.

The study provides insights as to what extent findings from learning studies can be valuable for others.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the theoretical reflection on learning study as a research approach. The focus is on description and reflection on the methodology of learning study as paedeutic research. This research is for, not on, teachers, i.e. research into problems and challenges faced by teachers in their professional practice. Learning study as paedeutic research is about the content and processes of formation/Bildung in relation to specific learning objects. Its focus is on subject-specific ways of knowing as well as how such knowing is enabled through teaching.

The point of departure is a perspective on research approaches as practices, i.e. as activities with certain aims as well as ways of “making” knowledge. Based on a description of the knowledge machinery in a learning study, i.e. those mechanisms that together generate new knowledge, the knowledge claims that can be made are discussed together with the theoretical underpinning of the arguments. The knowledge machinery is described in relation to how it is organised around the delimitation and analysis of an object of Learning as well as designing and evaluating ways to make the critical aspects of this object of learning visible. As an epistemological underpinning, some aspects of pragmatic philosophical thinking regarding the relationship between theory and practice are outlined. Based on that the research process may be described as a development of means-ends relationships – from unconscious empirical relationships to conscious staging of internal and theoretical relations. Abduction is an important tool for this meaning-making.

Learning study can be described as a particularistic, theory-building research approach concerning the knowing of specific learning objects as well as how they can be taught and learnt. The knowledge that is generated in learning study is theoretical and describes aspects of the teaching and learning of specific objects of learning. The research process can be described in terms of specification where practice is gradually supplied with a more differentiated meaning. A learning study is organised around a specific object of learning that functions as an open and unfolding object of knowledge. It combines a practice-based development of theory with a theory-based development of practice.

The development of the thinking about learning study as research for, rather than on, teachers is paedeutical research. A contribution to reflection on the knowledge machinery and knowledge claims of such research.

Assessment for learning (AfL) or formative assessment is an idea widely embraced by the education field; however, it is recognised as difficult to practice at classroom. This paper, with a case study, explores how an action research activity, learning study, helps a group of teachers in Hong Kong transcend some assessment boundaries and develop assessment tools that are more conducive for student’s learning. As guided by variation theory, a distinctive feature of learning study is its intensive use of formative assessment tools, including pre- and post-tests and interviews with students, to provide feedback to teaching and evidence of learning. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how teachers learn to use the formative assessment tools to overcome practical problems in teaching and improve their instruction.

A case study was conducted. Data collected included field notes on classroom observations, records of meetings, students’ interviews and students’ writings in both pre- and post-tests. The general framework for qualitative data analysis by Miles and Huberman (1994) guided the data analysis process with the foci on the change in teachers’ perceptions and improvement of their skills in adopting formative assessment tools.

Although the initial aim of conducting learning study was examination-driven, i.e., to improve the students’ performance in an external examination, it became evident over time that teachers participating in the inquiry process had gained a better understanding of making use of the assessment results as feedback to improve student learning and their instruction. This constituted an ideal case for studying the learning process of the teachers as they practiced AfL and transcend some conventional assessment boundaries in an authentic classroom situation.

This is one of the scarce studies, which demonstrates how the assessment elements of learning study, i.e. pre/post tests and student interviews, can be integrated into the working practice of teachers as a form of AfL and become an integral aspect of classroom practice.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest ways that we can widen our vision since our views are limited by our theoretical lens.

The paper first draws on articles in the current issue to illustrate how limitations imposed by our theoretical lens can be partly overcome. It then draws on the insights from two recent papers by Svensson (2016) and Lo and Chik (2016) to discuss some ways forward. Svensson’s paper argues for integrating research on teaching and learning using case-based studies and the contextual analysis approach. Lo and Chik’s paper is about how our learning can go beyond the single case through attending to fusion in the external horizon. The conceptual lens from these two papers which are from the phenomenography, variation theory and learning study tradition is applied to look at some of the papers in this issue which are from the lesson study tradition.

Although there is an inherent limitation to what we can see as a consequence of the theoretical lens that we take, we can widen our vision by learning to see from others’ perspectives and gain insights that would be useful to us.

The conceptual lenses from the phenomenography, variation theory and learning study tradition is applied to look at some of the papers which are from the lesson study tradition to reveal alternative ways of seeing.

Knowledge concerning the meaning of the object of learning is an important contribution of Learning study. The purpose of this paper is to generate this kind of knowledge and show how it can be developed and refined in the different phases of a Learning study.

The paper reports on a Learning study in primary technology education conducted with students aged six to seven years old, with the aim to explore a specific object of learning; to construct a linkage mechanism for transferring and transforming movement.

The findings show several aspects to discern by the learner in order to grasp the object of learning and reveal how this knowledge was gradually developed during the Learning study. The presumed aspects, those identified in the pre- and post-test, as well as how they were elaborated in the lesson contributed to refining the meaning of the object of learning.

In Learning study, knowledge concerning the meaning of the object of learning is generated. By empirically demonstrating the development and specification of this knowledge during a Learning study, this paper will contribute to the discussion of knowledge products from Learning studies as well as to knowledge concerning what there is to know in order to develop a specific capability in technology education.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the conceptual classification of learning study as a research approach.

The paper is mainly theoretical, drawing on articles concerning classroom‐based research approaches as well as on some distinctions between a university‐based science of the universal and a clinical science of the particular.

The main argument of the article is that learning studies can neither be subsumed under “design and development research” (because this type of research does not include the professional actor) nor under “teacher research” (because it does not pay much attention to theoretical knowledge) nor should it be regarded as a hybrid between design experiments and lesson studies. In spite of similarities to both it should rather be described as clinical research (in analogy to medical clinical research). The use of teachers’ experiences and tacit knowing in the knowledge‐producing process, the iterative process of specification of theory, and the uniqueness of the learning problems among different groups of pupils are central aspects of a particularistic clinical research process. In comparison with lesson study, the learning study is more focussed on constructing knowledge concerning objects of learning as well as teaching‐learning relations. Teachers are included in the research as interpretative professionals making professional sense of particular educational events.

The paper promotes the conceptual discussion of the learning study approach, as well as of both lesson and learning studies as research approaches, i.e. as knowledge‐producing practices.

Facing increasing global competition, firms must ceaselessly acquire new knowledge and enhance their capabilities in response to rapidly changing customer requirements. Amidst the varying collaborative relationships that occur between firms, it is particularly important for firms to learn from international joint ventures. However, few existing studies have explored this issue empirically. Rooted in the organizational learning perspective, this study seeks to investigate the learning intent, learning process and learning outcomes of host parent companies taking part in international joint ventures, and to propose and verify a theoretical model of learning for host parent companies.

The study used Taiwanese firms as research objects and employed the survey method to collect sample data. In total, 64 international joint ventures involving Taiwanese firms were collected and analyzed. The objective of this study was to examine the relationships between latent constructs, such as learning intent, learning process and learning outcome. Thus, the structural equation modeling approach was adopted to test the theoretical model. However, the sample size used in this study was small, so the partial least squares (PLS) method was employed.

The empirical results showed that a parent company's learning outcome is affected by the interaction between the parent company and the joint venture, as well as the internal knowledge integration capacity of the parent company. The interaction between the parent company and the joint venture will simultaneously drive the parent's intra‐organisational knowledge integration. Moreover, the parent company's strategic intent to learning from the joint venture will affect the parent company's knowledge integration, along with the interaction between the parent company and the joint venture. Likewise, the parent company's learning intent will affect its evaluation of the joint venture's knowledge, while further influencing its intra‐organizational knowledge integration.

The paper combines the perspectives of learning intent, learning process and learning outcomes in order to propose and test empirically a model that explains how the host parents of developing countries enhance their knowledge and capabilities by means of international joint ventures. Thus, the study attends to the deficiency of the literature in addressing the field of learning through international joint ventures. It also provides some insights and suggestions for firms that regard alliance strategy as a learning opportunity for enhancing a firm's knowledge base and organizational capabilities.

This paper describes and discusses aspects that affect research questions in a practice-based research study, where learning study is used as a framework. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to understanding of the process where teachers and a researcher collaborate in transforming practical teaching problems into research questions.

A case study is conducted. Data consist of field notes, logbooks, manuscripts and conference papers from two learning studies conducted in grade 4 by three teachers and one researcher, and notes from meetings in a subject-teacher group at the school. The analysis focuses on how the research questions emerge and change in relation to discussions among teachers and in the research group of teaching, previous research and learning theory.

Questions about students’ discernment of the structure in the base-ten system emerged in learning study 1 and in the subject-teacher group. Discussions of previous research and the didactical theory learning activity transformed the research questions in learning study 2, into focusing students’ theoretical knowledge, examining general structures in the base system, using learning models as tools. Conditions for identification of specific teaching problems and alternative theory in a learning study are discussed.

The explicit example where research questions are transformed can be used in further discussions and methodological questions regarding formulation of research questions in educational research. Discussions, specifically of transforming research questions, when learning study is used may be promoted.