For several historical and cultural reasons, the United States has long pursued a strategy of improving teaching by improving teachers. The rarely questioned logic underlying this choice says that by improving the right characteristics of teachers, they will teach more effectively. The authors expose the assumptions on which this logic is built, propose an alternative approach to improving teaching that engages teachers (and researchers) directly in the work of improving teaching, present some indirect evidence to support this approach, and examine the cultural traditions and beliefs that have kept the conventional approach in place for so long.

Teaching, Rather Than Teachers, As a Path Toward Improving Classroom Instruction

The goal of this study is to uncover the successes and challenges that preservice teachers are likely to experience as they unpack lesson-level mathematical learning goals (i.e., identify the subconcepts and subskills that feed into target learning goals). Unpacking learning goals is a form of specialized mathematical knowledge for teaching, an essential starting point for studying and improving one’s teaching. Thirty K–8 preservice teachers completed 4 written tasks. Each task specified a learning goal and then asked the preservice teachers to complete a teaching activity with this goal in mind. For example, preservice teachers were asked to evaluate whether a student’s responses to a series of mathematics problems showed understanding of decimal number addition. The results indicate that preservice teachers can identify mathematical subconcepts of learning goals in supportive contexts but do not spontaneously apply a strategy of unpacking learning goals to plan for, or evaluate, teaching and learning. Implications for preservice education are discussed.

Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching in Planning and Evaluating Instruction: What Can Preservice Teachers Learn?

This introductory article aims to provide a synthesis of the state-of-the art studies on lesson study with in-service mathematics teachers and an outlook on the entire issue. First, we report a systematic literature review on lesson study with in-service mathematics teachers. The findings are synthesized into four themes that include conceptualization of lesson study, theoretical perspectives on research on lesson study, benefits of implementing lesson study, and challenges in adapting lesson study. Then, we briefly introduce the articles in the current issue under four clusters. These are conceptualizations and adaptation of lesson study, teacher learning and improving teaching through lesson study, knowledgeable others’ learning, and interplay between theory and practice through lesson study. The literature review and the other articles in this special issue provide a ground for readers to reflect critically on the current research on and practice of lesson study and to discuss future directions for the development of lesson study.

Improving teaching, developing teachers and teacher educators, and linking theory and practice through lesson study in mathematics: an international perspective

Teachers are regarded as having a major role in the development of mathematics teaching and students’ learning. Nevertheless, in much mathematics education research, teachers are viewed as recipients, and sometimes even as means to generate or disseminate knowledge, thus conserving a distinctive gap between research and practice. The theme of this chapter is to regard teachers as key stakeholders in research (i.e., as (co-)producers of professional and/or scientific knowledge) in order to make the link between research and practice more fruitful for both sides. After exploring the concept of stakeholder, the authors present five international examples, all of them involving teachers researching their own or their colleagues’ practice. An analysis of the commonalities and differences among these examples reveals the presence of three important dimensions of research where teachers are key stakeholders: reflective, inquiry-based activity with respect to teaching action; a significant action-research component accompanied by the creation of research artefacts by the teachers (sometimes assisted by university researchers); and the dynamic duality of research and professional development. This chapter illustrates how traditional barriers between research and practice are being replaced by synergistic interactions between the two, enabling the intersection of the two worlds.

Linking Research to Practice: Teachers as Key Stakeholders in Mathematics Education Research

We examine the distinction between teaching and teachers as it relates to instructional improvement Drawing from work outside of education on improvement systems and from analyzing the Japanese system of lesson study, we contend that a focus on teaching can shape a coordinated system for improvement whereas a focus on teachers, common in the United States, leads to elements that are uncoordinated and often work against the continuous, steady improvement of classroom teaching We propose that the concept of systems for improvement and its instantiation in Japanese K–8 education offer opportunities to reexamine US efforts to improve teaching and shift these efforts toward a more promising direction

Teaching Versus Teachers as a Lever for Change: Comparing a Japanese and a U.S. Perspective on Improving Instruction:

This paper describes Keli (Exemplary Lesson Development), a new model of in-service teacher education in China, implemented within a broader program of Xingdong Jiaoyu (Action Education), which has been implemented since 2003. This paper sets out how to implement the innovative Keli model. Finally, the implications for the practical community, including teachers and researchers, are examined.

Jiansheng Bao

Papers

Towards a Model for Teacher Professional Development in China: Introducing Keli

Mathematicians’, mathematics educators’, and mathematics teachers’ professional conceptions of the school learning of mathematical modelling in China

Characteristics of Good Mathematics Teaching in China: Findings from Classroom Observations