Exploring Professional Knowledge Landscapes: Narratives of Lesson Study in Social Studies Teacher Education

• In Event: Lesson Study Variation Across Contexts

Abstract

Introduction
Lesson study (LS), deeply rooted into the culture of the teacher professional knowledge landscape, may transcend the “once-tried, then died” fate of professional development innovations. Stated another way, opportunities for sustained use of LS require a breakdown of barriers separating inside-classroom spaces from outside-of-classroom spaces, an opening and exploration of the professional knowledge landscape in which members of school communities engage, facilitate and value interconnectedness. Using LS to explore the professional knowledge landscape among preservice teachers illuminates the challenges and benefits of adopting LS practice in the context of teacher education.

Purpose
This structured poster explores narratives of LS use among social studies preservice teachers at a Texas university. The narratives reflect experiences over the course of the 8-week LS cycle. They tell preservice teacher stories that highlight the challenges and benefits of engaging in LS during the social studies methods course.

Theoretical Perspective
Often, teachers are viewed as curriculum implementers who best utilize “bulletproofed pedagogy” that flows down the “conduit” (Clandinin & Connelly, 1996). The teacher professional knowledge landscape is informed by what flows through the conduit that is ultimately reflected in a teachers’ personal practical knowledge (experiences that drive enacted practice). This research explores LS use from the perspective of the professional knowledge landscape of social studies preservice teachers. It posits that an opening of professional knowledge landscapes situates LS in teacher cultural spaces.

Methodology
Narrative analysis and thematic content analysis were used to analyze preservice teacher reflections, interviews and the final LS report produced by each group. Emerging themes were collected to construct narratives of experience among individuals and groups.

Data
Data include individual teacher reflections completed both during the LS cycle and after its conclusion. Interviews conducted after the LS cycle also inform this study. Additionally, final LS reports reveal the collective LS process experienced by each group.

Results
At varying points in the LS cycle, preservice teachers’ unfamiliarity with LS stressed the lesson design process. Previous teacher education courses employed typical lesson planning activities that hindered preservice teacher progress.

Further, an absence of the value of research and investigation among preservice teachers presented a significant obstacle.

Collaborative growth occurred among group members. Though each group’s growth developed differently, group growth revealed interconnectedness among members. An appreciation of interconnectedness among members of the LS group surpassed typical collaborative use between members of a planning team seen in school contexts.

Significance
LS has the potential to bridge the gap that separates theory from practice. Effectively, a reciprocity develops among educational researchers and practitioners as teachers explore new territory on the professional knowledge landscape. This must be explored in the context of teacher education and it must be done in ways that attempt to exemplify the benefits of the process of LS as opposed its products. This example of preservice teacher LS use focuses on the process and presents narrative examples of how the process influenced preservice teacher development.

Author

• Eliel Hinojosa, Texas A&M University - College Station