Teacher Lesson Study for Integrating Moral Education Within Seventh-Grade History: A Case Study

• In Event: Lesson Study for Professional Development of Teachers to Integrate Moral Education Within Middle School History

Abstract

This presentation employs a case study to illustrate the Lesson Study (Lewis et al., 2006) process as it unfolded over the course of the school year as a group of seventh grade middle school teachers generated history lessons designed to stimulate socio-moral development. Each teacher was a district-designated leader for one middle school within our project working with sixth through eighth grade teachers in the Oakland, California public school system. The focal group for this case study included one teacher who had participated in the original project employing social cognitive domain theory to structure history lessons (AUTHORS, 2015). This teacher also had prior experience in generating effective classroom discussions. The teachers met once each month to engage in lesson planning, and as a forum for reflection on just completed lessons. They produced a total of three lessons for classes of 35 students.

Our presentation will demonstrate how these teachers, as individuals, and as a group were challenged and grew from attempting to implement theory into practice in the 3 rounds of developing a lesson, teaching and observing their group members teach the lesson, debriefing and reflecting. We follow shifts in group leadership toward shared decision-making, and how the world of the teacher as “soloist” evolved into a professional community of educators.

To demonstrate the trajectory of this group of educators, the presenters will use transcripts and video excerpts of planning meetings, student discussions, and teacher debrief conversations following lesson implementation. The transcripts of teachers' conversations give insight into the specific challenges that this group encountered as they grappled with issues of developmental theory, the importance of generating classroom discourse as a means for student moral growth, and their goals as history content specialists.

For example, the teachers discovered that the students in their small group discussions needed extra scaffolding in order to reference textual and peer-generated evidence for their moral positions or views on the role of conventions. In their second research lesson, this group of teachers came up with a way for students to remember what their peers had said, so they could reference it later.

We will also follow the process in which teachers developed the protocol used to generate student discussions with a goal toward promoting transactive forms of discourse (Berkowitz & Gibbbs, 1983). Video excerpts of the student discussions will allow audience members to witness transactive discourse in action, and as it played out in their history lessons.

The implications from this case study significantly contribute to the developing practice of moral education by demonstrating how teachers can support each other while learning to incorporate morally-interesting and historically-relevant content into their lessons. These teachers created a community that generated constructive feedback for improvement. Their process of lesson-planning, examining student work, and preparing for classroom discussions changed over the course of this project. This project provided valuable insight into the process of training teachers to become actively involved in developing curriculum that addresses moral and social development as well as academic content knowledge.

Authors

• Robyn Gee, University of California - Berkeley

• Allegra Midgette, University of California - Berkeley