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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the long-term impact of participating in school-based lesson study on mathematics teachers' professional community.

A study was conducted with six mathematics teachers, from two post-primary schools in the Republic of Ireland, following up on their participation in school-based lesson study over the academic year 2012/13 (see Ni Shuilleabhain, 2016). Qualitative data were generated through one-to-one, semi-structured interviews with the participating teachers and analysed using an empirical framework for teacher community formation (Grossman et al., 2001).

Analysis of the interview responses suggests that the mathematics teachers in both schools, Doone and Crannog, had developed a mature professional community during their participation in lesson study in 2012/13. Furthermore, the research finds that, in the absence of any other professional development intervention, both teacher communities have been sustained at this level six years later. These findings suggest that a lesson study may serve as a potential structure to foster the development of sustainable professional communities within subject-based teacher groups.

While a lesson study has been shown to support the development of teacher professional communities, previous research has not addressed the sustainability of the communities which emerge. This study, therefore, adds to the existing literature by investigating teachers' perceptions of the long-term impact of lesson study participation on their professional community.

This narrative inquiry examines teachers' influences on undergraduate/graduate students who enrolled in STEM programs and intended to enter STEM careers. Three National Science Foundation (NSF) scholarship grants sat in the backdrop. Narrative exemplars were crafted using the interpretative tools of broadening, burrowing, storying and restorying, fictionalization, and serial interpretation. Three diverse students' narratives constituted the science education cases: one from teacher education, another about cybertechnology, and a third involving cybersecurity. The influence of the university students' former teachers cohered around five themes: (1) same program-different narratives, (2) in loco parentis, (3) counterstories, (4) learning in small moments, and (5) the importance of the liberal arts in STEM education. The students' narratives form instructive models for their siblings and other students pursuing STEM degrees/careers. Most importantly, the multiperspectival stories of experiences capture the far-reaching impact of “unsung teachers” whose long-term influence is greatly underestimated by the public.

This research explores the “transformation” ideas of Japanese Lesson Study (LS) and Open Approach (OA) to create and sustain a Thailand LS incorporated OA (TLSOA) model to successfully adapt to the local contexts. Although LS is spreading globally, previous studies have identified several challenges to its implementation.

The researcher employed a longitudinal research design that involved repeated investigations of a group of participants: from their fourth year as bachelor's degree students until they became eligible coordinators to practice the TLSOA model for teachers' professional development (PD). Data were collected using reflective journals, two types of survey questionnaires, and records of periodical reflective meetings over three cohorts.

As results reveal, the participating teachers' active engagement in the TLSOA model has made a positive impact on their teaching practices, collegiality, and professional self-identification. Students perceived themselves as having enormous changes in their learning behaviors. Those changes are linked to establishing a positive, student-centered, and active learning-based school culture with teachers' beliefs for innovations.

Further studies should focus on the possible conflicts emerging between the different cultures of teaching.

The idea of the TLSOA model is to ensure teachers are well trained to possess sufficient skills.

The findings could be of value for the leaders, educators, policymakers to advocate the TLSOA model as a systematic approach to whole-school improvement and as a channel for spreading effects at the national, the APEC, and the CLMV regional levels.

There are few challenges as daunting as achieving positive outcomes for students with emotional disabilities. A major obstacle is the generally poor quality of classroom instruction. Too few general education teachers or special education teachers possess the knowledge and skills to adequately serve this population of learners. Various factors account for the inadequate level of teacher preparation, including licensure requirements that emphasize quantity over quality, the research-to-practice gap, a train-and-hope rather than a train-and-coach approach to teacher preparation, and the absence of an infrastructure to support sustained use of evidence-based practices. I discuss each of these factors and offer some recommendations for improving the quality of teacher preparation and, in turn, the potential for more positive student outcomes.

Migration is one of the most significant domestic, development and foreign policy issues in the world today. According to the International Organization for Migration, 1 out of every 35 persons worldwide is an international migrant. This chapter discusses the complex issue of international teacher migration, and reports findings from empirical research conducted in the UK to illuminate the socio-cultural and economic contexts of teacher migration in both industrialized nations and in developing countries. This research, commissioned by the Commonwealth Secretariat, served to inform development of a Commonwealth Teacher Recruitment Protocol, which was adopted by 53 countries in late 2004. This chapter serves to disseminate the results of this research to a larger international audience. It also provides an analysis of the process in which educational research informs international policy development.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of lesson study for the development of a science of teaching cast in the form of John Dewey's “laboratory model” of learning to teach.

The early sections compare the “laboratory” with the “apprenticeship” and “rationalist” models of learning to teach, which emphasise the primacy of practice and theory respectively. The unity of theory and practice embodied in the “laboratory model” is outlined, linking the development of teachers’ theoretical understanding with the development of their practice. A distinction between pedagogy and teaching is drawn. The later sections examine the potential of lesson study to develop as a teachers’ based pedagogical science, particularly when informed by variation theory. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which different theories of learning can be integrated into learning study, and points to ways in which particular studies can contribute to the systematic construction of pedagogical knowledge.

There can be no pedagogy without casting teaching as an experimental science, in which pedagogical theories are appropriated, tested and further developed as a source of pedagogical principles. Pedagogy therefore consists of a science of teaching in which teachers actively participate in knowledge construction. Lesson study when informed by an explicit learning theory, such as variation theory, provides a strong basis for the development of a practitioner‐based science of teaching.

The paper creates original links across disparate work in the field of teaching and learning.

This paper reports on a study exploring a sustained coaching model of teacher professional development (PD). The study was undertaken with middle school teachers in a small rural school division in Alberta, Canada. The goal of the study was to theorize about the components of the sustained coaching model of PD that supported or was a barrier to teachers engaging in a year-long PD series.

A grounded theory methodology was used to theorize about the components of a teacher PD model that participants viewed as being a support or barrier to their engagement in the PD. Data were collected from two individual participant interviews: one interview at the beginning of the year and one interview at the end of the year.

Findings indicate that teacher PD should include a constant community, accountability to other participants in that community, and a balance of theoretical and practical support and be provided over multiple sessions. In addition, in order for the PD to be sustainable, barriers to engaging in the PD should be minimized.

A recognition of the complexity of the factors influencing a teacher's interaction with PD provides a lens with which to consider the potential for a teacher's engagement with PD.

Beliefs about teaching influence practice and can play a powerful role in the day-to-day decision-making of teachers. Pre-service teachers commonly accrue their original set of beliefs on teaching from teacher preparation programs or personal experiences, but unlike teachers with more experience, new teachers are more susceptible to changing their beliefs on teaching once they become official teachers of record. If these beliefs change in a negative way, such as by adopting a set of beliefs that views students through a deficit lens, or capable of achieving less than their privileged counterparts, then schools will continue to foster tendencies for social reproduction instead of tendencies for social justice. In urban schools, this increase in negative perceptions of students is even more common as new teachers face challenges that are less likely to occur in non-urban schools. Findings suggest that new teachers do change their beliefs during their first year, and that these beliefs often reflect the beliefs of trusted and close colleagues within their social networks. While some teachers experienced positive changes in their beliefs and teaching practices, other teachers experienced negative changes in their beliefs that unfavorably affected students. Most teachers were unaware of their belief changes, but offered explanations for how and why their beliefs could have changed without their noticing over the course of the study. Implications and possible directions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to explore students' mathematization through a flow of lessons using the Thailand Lesson Study Incorporated Open Approach (TLSOA) to improve the excellence of instruction.

A total of 16 Grade 4 students were selected because they have been taught using the TLSOA model for four years. Six Lesson Study (LS) team members participated, and two instruments were utilized, namely student worksheets, and field notes. An ethnographic research design was employed.

The results revealed that the students' mathematical ideas were developed from the real world to the mathematical world through a flow of lessons based on the four phases of the Open Approach (OA).

Firstly, the students demonstrated their ability to represent the real world independently when the teacher posed an open-ended problem. Secondly, the students demonstrated their ability to use semi-concrete aids to develop their ideas while self-learning. Thirdly, the students showed how they developed their ideas to solve the open-ended problem using relevant objects or related concepts as part of a whole-class discussion and comparison exercise. Finally, the students demonstrated their abilities to represent the mathematical world using numbers and symbols to communicate their ideas when they were required to make a summary by connecting their mathematical ideas.

This study adds new insight to the literature on students' mathematization using the TLSOA model.

This paper is about extraordinary performance in organizations. Our specific focus is unusual. We examine a context with which many readers are deeply familiar, the public school classroom. We consider the work of highly effective teachers and generate a framework of hypotheses about how they get extraordinary results. These hypotheses may contrast with the reader’s assumptions of what a public school teacher does. The framework may therefore provoke insights about how to create and lead high performing organizations in other contexts.