Teachers: learn with colleagues through ‘jugyokenkyu’

Use this collaborative Japanese technique to boost professional development of teachers

I recently came across jugyokenkyu, a technique used to improve teaching and learning in Japanese schools. In Japanese, “jugyo” means teaching and learning, and “kenkyu” means research. Hence, jugyokenkyu means the research of teaching and learning. In other words, lesson study. This is a comprehensive process that enables teachers to reflect on their work and its impact, and to target specific improvements in their lessons.

Best of all, every teacher benefits from the support and contributions of their colleagues.

In her article, A different approach to teacher learning: Lesson study, education correspondent, Emily Hanford explains how lesson study works:

A group of teachers comes together and identifies a teaching problem they want to solve. Maybe their students are struggling with adding fractions.

Next, the teachers do some research on why students struggle with adding fractions. They read the latest education literature and look at lessons other teachers have tried…
After they’ve done the research, the teachers design a lesson plan together. The lesson plan is like their hypothesis: If we teach this lesson in this way, we think students will understand fractions better.

Then, one of the teachers teaches the lesson to students, and the other teachers in the group observe. Often other teachers in the school will come watch, and sometimes educators from other schools too. It’s called a public research lesson.

During the public research lesson, the observers don’t focus on the teacher; they focus on the students. How are the students reacting to the lesson? What are they understanding or misunderstanding? The purpose is to improve the lesson, not to critique the teacher.

Instead of keeping best practices siloed, jugyokenkyu opens up pathways for co-workers to exchange knowledge with one other. Japanese schools believe that teachers can (and should) learn to be better. But instead of simply asking “Is this teacher effective?”, they also ask “Are these methods effective?”.

They shift the focus from teachers, to teaching.

Time to apply it to schools across India as well.