In Search of Scale: Expanding Lesson Study Beyond a Volunteer Network

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Abstract

This case study examines how one district in the northeastern United States started a reform and attempted to bring it to scale. The district engaged in lesson study, a model for collaboratively planning, observing, and reflecting on instruction (Lewis, Perry, & Herd, 2009). I asked: What conditions influenced teachers’ participation in lesson study and how, if at all, did lesson study transfer to settings outside the original network?

Scholars have explored how new ideas are scaled up from an initial effort so as to affect the larger education system (Elmore, 1996; Schneider & McDonald, 2007). Often reformers are stymied by the fragmented “nonsystem” in American education: interventions aimed at transforming instruction rarely make their way into classrooms (Cohen, 1995, p. 13). Coburn (2003) offers a reconceptualization of scale: Achieving depth means that teachers have changed both their beliefs and their instructional practices. An idea that has spread is translated into district policies. Practices that are sustainable endure despite changes in resources and priorities. A shift in reform ownership means participants advocate for the reform’s value and purpose (Coburn, 2003).

I use themes from Coburn’s (2003) framework to create a case study about differences in how administrators and teachers understood lesson study’s role in the district’s strategy for professional learning. Data collection took place from 2010-2013, in Whitney (pseudonym), a small public district in the Northeast. I interviewed 21 teachers involved in lesson study, 7 teachers who were not regularly involved, and 11 principal and district administrators (Seidman, 2006). I also observed participants regularly in classrooms and at professional development (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2009).

Overall, district leaders, principals, and teachers had varying levels of investment in lesson study, which affected its potential to scale. Lesson study had achieved some depth and spread due to the advocacy of committed volunteers, who reported its benefits to their mathematical knowledge for teaching (Ball, Thames, & Phelps, 2008; Fernandez, 2005). Advocates secured consistent leadership for lesson study, funding, and a method for recruiting participants. Yet they struggled to achieve sustainability or transfer of reform ownership due to competing conditions at the schools. Specifically, some principals had other priorities that battled with lesson study for time and resources, and there was a perception among principals that instructional reforms “come and go.” I conclude that this district’s experience with lesson study illustrates a greater challenge: achieving Coburn’s (2003) four conditions of scale requires coordination from both the “bottom up” (teachers using the reform) and the “top down” (leaders creating systems and structures to support the reform). In order for lesson study to scale, stakeholders across the district needed to agree it held value and align resources to support it.

A strategy for scaling up that depends on volunteerism alone will not counter prevailing institutional norms (Elmore, 1996). Reforms benefit from volunteerism initially; however, relying on volunteerism for scale reinforces disorganized professional learning experiences, rather than creating infrastructure that coheres around a vision for how teaching and learning improves.

Author

• Candice Bocola, Harvard University