District Sense-Making and Implementation of Teacher Professional Development: A Case of Lesson Study in Florida

• In Event: Teachers as Levers for Change: The Effects of Teacher Professional Development on School Improvement

Abstract

An online survey of district policy and practice on lesson study was sent to the school districts in Florida in 2013 and 2014. From the survey results, ten districts which had made a considerable commitment to the implementation of lesson study were selected to be interviewed. The case study revealed that district leaders made sense of a new state policy and considered teacher buy-in to be critical for successful practice of lesson study. In establishing buy-in, two models emerged. “Bottom-up” districts attempted to capture teacher buy-in from abdicating many decisions to the teacher level. Alternatively, "top-down” districts kept many of the decisions at the district level as an attempt to capture administrational buy-in, which in turn would develop teacher buy-in.

Authors

• Gareth Bryan Wilkinson, Florida State University

• Motoko Akiba, Florida State University

• Guillermo J. Farfan, Florida State University

• Cassie Howard, Florida State University

• Angelina Kuleshova, Florida State University