Exploring Learning

Lesson Study as a research concept is a new idea to me - however, the elements of what comprises it are not. I am an advocate of peer observations and feedback as an invaluable tool in improving teaching and learning. However, in the 12 years I have been teaching, I have found that the majority of teachers do not want to engage in this kind of professional learning. I think there are a number of reasons for this but the main one being trust. I have found, in international schools, where your position is never tenured and you are always a guest in a country meaning your status often feels unstable, there is an underlying feeling of mistrust around observations. Rarely are they seen as tools for improvement but instead are viewed as ways to ‘catch you out’ and make you lose your job. It often doesn’t matter if you are an excellent teacher either, meaning even effective and experienced educators are not immune. It was with a refreshing air then that I read the article by Gebert and Gins...

As a fairly experienced educator, I was VERY shocked at the opening statement of Wayman & Stringfield’s (2006) article that student data is an “untapped resource in helping educators diagnose student learning needs.” I find it hard to believe that teachers do not use data to plan out teaching and learning, as “data use is central to the school improvement process” (Chrispeels 1992; Earl and Katz 2002 in Wayman & Stringfield, (2006)). Thinking more closely however , I thought of a few fundamental reasons why data may not be used or may not be used effectively; namely lack of access, lack of time, and lack of training. One of the major components to why data is not used or is used but perhaps inefficiently, is due to the way it is stored and accessed. Historically, data has been collected , but storage systems effectively rendered that data “inaccessible to most practitioners” (Wayman & Stringfield, 2006) which can only “frustrate flexible analyses” (Stringfield et al. 20...