Teacher Professional Learning Through a Culturally Embedded Implementation of Lesson Study in Two Philippine Schools

• In Event: 53.055 - Reflections on Teachers as Learners: Selective Attention, In-the-Moment Decisions, Affect, and Culture

Abstract

Having been a permanent fixture in the Japanese school system for more than a century, Lesson Study (LS) is believed to have played an important role in Japan's consistently high performance in international education surveys (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). As such, LS is perhaps internationally the most consistently successful program for promoting teacher learning. LS is a school-based collaborative activity that involves a continuous cycle of planning, demonstrating, and improving a lesson (Fernandez & Yoshida, 2004; Lewis & Tsuchida, 1998; Stephens, 2011). It provides teachers with more insights on teaching strategies, curriculum content and student thinking—making it an attractive form of and program for teacher growth and improvement in instruction for other countries.

Over the past decade, there has been great interest in the international implementation of LS. This presentation identifies two approaches to the implementation of LS outside Japan: a copy first then implement (fidelity) approach, and a culturally embedded approach. A fidelity approach looks at how schools and teachers in host countries need to gear up and change in order to implement Lesson Study. A culturally embedded approach looks at how LS might itself adjust in order to fit into the local culture. It also poses a further question: how might LS itself need to change if it is to work well in another country? These two approaches represent different and contrasting models of learning.

Teaching and learning are cultural activities, contributing to the forms of acceptable pedagogy, teacher interactions, classroom practices and teacher professional development programs. Using Hofstede's dimensions of national culture, this presentation identifies several key features of Japanese culture that appear to explain why LS has been so successful there. The cultural groundedness of Japan's success calls into question the fidelity approach.

This presentation will talk about the author's culturally embedded implementation of LS with 13 high school mathematics teachers from two public secondary schools in the Philippines. Two instruments, the Values Survey Module for Teachers 2012 (VSMT12), adapted from the Values Survey Module 2008 (Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010), and the Mathematics Teachers' Perceptions of a Good Mathematics Lesson (MTPGML), designed by the author, were used to anticipate cultural barriers, potential sources of tension, and/or affordances in implementing LS in the two schools. Where there is inconsistency in the cultural and/or values orientations, tensions, misinterpretations, misconceptions, and even resistance from other teachers may arise. The results from the two instruments enabled the researcher to anticipate potential challenges in implementing LS in the two Philippine schools. The researcher designed a model that incorporates strategies that address anticipated challenges and harness identified affordances. This presentation will highlight the similarities and differences of implementation, shifts in endorsements of the teachers, and teacher experiences between the two schools. This is expected to shed light on how LS is likely to be transformed by or needs to take on some features of the adapting culture. Furthermore, knowing and addressing these incongruences promotes a more critical and strategic implementation that is more likely to facilitate lasting teacher professional learning.

Author

• Marlon Ebaeguin, University of the Philippines Diliman