Fang, Yanping

This paper presents findings from observations of the case teacher’s unit of lessons that informed the development of the video cases and teacher participation in the online PLCs. A simplified version of Nassaji & Wells’ (2000) IRF-discourse structure and the Mathematics Curriculum Framework (CPDD, 2005) reveals that the bridging from model method to algebra was done through ‘discussion of problem sums’ by purposefully and carefully building upon students’ work using model method. The lessons followed predominant IRF structure where teachers’ initiated discourse plays key role in developing students’ processes, metacognition, and attitudes towards building connection between the two methods. Such classroom discourse patterns informed the development of viewing questions that scaffold teachers in viewing the video cases.

Purpose Lesson study (LS) is generally regarded as a pathway for teachers' professional development and a method for teachers' instructional research. LS has been regarded as having the potential to drive large-scale reform but little is known about how it does so from a district level. Therefore, this paper aims to reveal how lesson study promote district education reform. Design/methodology/approach This study offers an in-depth case study of how District Y of Shanghai, China, took LS as the primary method in promoting its District Project of Building Curriculum Leadership in Schools. By analyzing the key project documents and achievements in project promotion, and interviews with the major Project leaders at District and school levels, this study explored the practice and impact of LS as a tool to promote district reform. Findings In the District Project, LS has been a medium to address each individual school's real problems of practice and turn them into reform vision and reform will in alignment with District goals. Five levels of school curriculum texts have been planned, designed, translated, implemented, reflected on, updated and mutually adjusted systematically through LS to ensure consistency in transforming District reform vision into classroom practice. Different models of teaching-research community building were found in sampled project schools and professional expertise was built with district support to promote reform. The curriculum leadership development through LS has shaped reform leader schools and formed a collection of LS exemplars circulated in schools as high-quality curriculum packages, which laid the foundation for district-wide reform. Originality/value The innovative practice of LS in China's education reform has expanded its reach from within one classroom to the entire district curriculum system and made it an important tool to drive large-school district-based education reform.

School leaders do recognise that there is an emerging new generation team of teachers with different abilities and life experience in our schools. These teachers bring into the classrooms diverse talents and they approach lesson planning and development in creative ways to motivate and engage their students to learn in school. A greater interplay among teachers would be useful to provide a more sustained approach for innovative and effective pedagogies to scale up across to other subjects and levels. The project allowed veteran teachers with deep teaching experiences working together with other teachers with new perspectives. Five teachers from a secondary school introduced media materials into their teaching of oracy in English Language (EL). The aim was to increase opportunities for high ability students to learn and interact with the materials outside the classroom. The focus of the paper is on the curriculum work as seen through the eyes of these five teachers in providing a more challenging school-based curriculum to engage their high ability students. The teachers planned a series of lessons guided by a modified lesson study protocol. Learning materials were packaged to achieve the syllabus and instructional objectives through the use of class tasks and small group discussions, role-modelling and in-depth study of specific interest areas in the media materials. The five dimensions in the PETALSTM Framework, namely, pedagogy, experience of learning, tone of environment, assessment and learning content were used to examine their pivotal role in predicting students’ engagement levels. Data analysis of the survey as well as interviews with somes tudents highlighted areas for future work in the use of media materials for EL teaching and learning.

Students’ limited view of mathematics and their strong orientation on numbers have been major hindrances in developing students’ capacity in problem solving. Our study aims to understand students’ challenges in reasoning quantitatively and gain insights on how they overcome these challenges. To this end, seven pairs of Grade 5 students and eight pairs Grade 7 were observed and videotaped when they solved one routine task and one nonroutine task. Their processes in solving these two tasks were analyzed using the method of conceptual analysis (Glasersfeld, 1995). Findings suggest that there were two major areas of difficulties that they experienced in reasoning quantitatively. Some of the major challenges behind those difficulties were the lack of quantitative understanding in whole numbers and fractions, the stronger focus on the magnitudes of quantities than the quantities themselves, and the stronger reliance on visually-perceived relationships in the model representation of situation than the quantitative relationships. A case of a Grade 7 pair is presented to discuss a context of pair collaboration that fosters the overcoming challenges in reasoning quantitatively that suggests a practical implication of using collaborative learning to support students’ development of quantitative reasoning capacity.

A project on lesson study carried out in 2006 and 2007 aimed to find out how it can be used to bring about enhanced teacher learning and instructional improvements. This two-year intensive collaboration between researchers and a local primary school involved planning, teaching and observing research lessons together, as well as studying the processes of school-based curriculum development and teacher learning. The challenges of implementing lesson study in the Singapore context and its evolving local adaptations were carefully documented and analysed. We found that with strong school support, lesson study could bring about continual instructional improvement and a sense of community among the teachers, even though its time-consuming nature may pose numerous challenges for the teachers and schools.