Three web sites with great lesson study resoures:

Lesson Research, By Catherine Lewis, Mills College, CA

Lesson Study Research Group at Teachers College, Columbia University

Research for Better Schools

The next two items are from Delaware Dept of Ed's writing project.

Research Lesson Outline 

Guidelines for Research Lesson Observation

Teacher Survey Results 9/20-22/00

Lesson Study Article in Tennessean 11/06/00

WPLN Story on Lesson Study (Audio)

The Brown Center Report on Eduation 2000:  How Well Are Students Learning? (Discusses Stigler & Hiebert at p. 15)

This is my motion that was approved by the Metropolitan Nashville School Board 7/11/00, see discussion beginning at p.49 of the minutes.

• MNPS produces two products:

• Lessons (lectures, labs, group work, videos, work sheets, assessments, etc.

• Assignments (homework, papers, projects, reading, etc.)

• The purpose of daily planning time, full-day planning sessions, and professional development time and money is to produce lessons and assignment that are more successful at helping students learn the curriculum.

• Teachers are the developers and implementers of our lessons and assignments.

• Teachers must be the leaders in improving our lessons and assignments. 

• Teachers need time to improve our lessons and assignments.

• "Lesson Study" is a model for how teachers can effectively approach the process of improving lessons and assignments.

• "Lesson Study" involves each and all of the following:

• small teams of teachers

• identifying an area of student achievement for improvement

• researching how to achieve improvement

• designing a lesson or assignment to accomplish that improvement and a method for assessing whether such improvement occurred 

• testing the lesson or assignment

• assessing and revising the lesson or assignment

• demonstrating the lesson or assignment to other teachers

• publishing the results of their work

• reviewing the results of other teams

• repeating the process two to three times per year

• This approach is described in The Teaching Gap (Stigler and Hiebert).  It is supported by Inventing Better Schools (Schlechty), by Teaching in America (Grant & Murray), and by Re-Creating Schools (Myers & Simpson).  The Practice-based Professional Improvement Program at Glencliff is an example of something close to lesson study at work in Metro Schools.  It is consistent with experience in the business world on quality improvement.

Therefore, the Director of Schools is instructed to review "lesson study" and make recommendations as to whether and how planning and professional development time could be used for "lesson study" in MNPS during the 2000-2001 school year.