Lesson Study and Lesson Sharing: An Appealing Marriage

Abstract

Lesson study and lesson sharing are two educational initiatives that, if merged, have the potential to revolutionize how teachers plan and deliver lessons. Lesson study is the joint production of lessons by a small team of teachers over the course of a few months. The resulting lesson plan is usually “on paper” and used only locally. Lesson sharing occurs on the Internet, providing contributing teachers with a mechanism for sharing their lessons with others. Typically a single teacher authors these shared lessons. We discuss the advantages and associated implementation barriers of each when viewed as separate activities, and then argue for their joint or merged implementation, describing how each would synergistically support the other. Not only would more vetted lessons be delivered to the Internet, but also the teacher teams participating in lesson creation would develop a much deeper understanding of pedagogy. We offer policy recommendations to support this new educational paradigm: A virtual marriage of lesson study and lesson sharing.