This document describes a study that used a variation of lesson study led by school mentors to contribute to the development of student teachers. The study explored how the student teachers and mentors collaborated to examine pedagogy, and what they learned from the process. Interviews with participants showed that mentors and student teachers believed the lesson study approach was impactful and useful for teacher learning, though there was variability in how lesson study was implemented. Both mentors and student teachers reported learning about student engagement and responses, and growing in their understanding of teaching pedagogy through examining the "pedagogical black box" of the classroom.

1. Lesson study in initial teacher education:
mentors and trainees collaborating in the
pedagogic black box
Cajkler, Wasyl and Wood, Phil
University of Leicester
Lesson Study Research Group
ATEE Conference 2014,
University of Minho, 26 August
www.le.ac.uk

2. Initial research questions
1. How did a variation of lesson study led by school-based
mentors contributed to student-teacher
development?
2. How did it enable student-teachers to engage with
pedagogy in teaching placement departments?
Emergent foci
• how student-teacher and mentor worked together
to explore pedagogy
• what participants learned from the process

3. Context and participants (2012-13)
 context: 8 secondary schools in an ITE programme
 6 trainee teachers of modern languages
 6 trainee teachers of geography
 9 mentors
 12 cases in two 8-week placements in a one-year
teacher preparation course (PGCE)

4. Theoretical framework
Four influences
1. Communities of Practice (Wenger 1998)
2. Professional capital (Hargreaves and Fullan 2012)
3. Teacher agency (Ball 2003; Biesta and Tedder 2006)
4. Pedagogic black box and pedagogic literacy (Cajkler
and Wood, ATEE 2013)
Interpretive approach

5. Data capture and analysis
• Unit of analysis: collective learning and practice development of Lesson
Study group
• Focus: individual interviews (informant-style, Powney and Watts 1987)
and focus group interviews
• Analysis: qualitative and inductive (on-going)

6. General findings
• Huge variability in approach to LS
• ‘Resistance’ to departure from ‘performative’
procedures
• Evidence of exploration of ‘pedagogic black box’
• Mentor and student-teacher conviction of impact
and usefulness
• No consistent revolution in discourse practices

7. Collaboration about pedagogy
How they worked together:
• Mentor leading
• Power dimension/asymmetry
• Advice phases in all meetings
• Some adherence to traditional approaches
• Wide variation

8. Planning Meeting Evaluation Meeting
Mentor Trainee Mentor Trainee
Phase A ML1 84% 16% 76% 24%
Phase A ML2 53% 47% 54% 46%
Phase A ML3 66% 34% 65% 35%
Phase A ML4 86% 14% 64% 36%
Phase A Geog1 80% 20% 84% 16%
Phase A Geog2 90% 10% 40%
UVT: 31%
11%
T: 18%
Phase A Geog1 53% 47% 64% 36%
Phase B Geog1 83% 2%
CT: 15%
75% 15%
CT: 10%
Phase B Geog2 87% 13% 72% (RL1)
71% (RL2)
28%
29%
Phase B ML1 57% 11%
T: 32%
50% 14%
T: 36%
Phase B ML2 71% 29% 56% (RL 1)
77% (RL2)
44%
23%
Distribution of speech in planning and evaluation meetings (first research lesson)

9. Planning together
Mentor: Okay. So the idea is to get them to answer what should be done about the
dangers of cliff collapse on the Norfolk coast. Any good lesson should have a
starter, a main point and see if learning has taken place by doing a plenary as
well. If I grab a piece of paper we can sit and we can just look at ideas ………
Trainee: Are we making the whole lesson independent?
Mentor: All the students will be independent learners in that lesson. However,
you’re going to monitor three that we will identify and you will just track their
progress as to how successful we have taken this lesson and turned it into an
independent learning lesson. What do you understand as independent learning?
Trainee: That you’re doing something for yourself. There’s no group work involved.
Mentor: Alright. So there’s no group work. So it’s people thinking for themselves
and specifically using…
Trainee: Their own ideas.

10. Evaluating a Research Lesson
Mentor: Through the lesson as I, as I saw it. First thing is for when you do it. I
didn’t have enough time to cut up the cards. So that, that was a key
thing that needs to be done, because they … go off-task. … What did
you think about the statements? ……
Trainee: Yeah, I thought they were good.
Mentor: From your observation of XXXX… Well, say the two nearest to where
you were sitting – maybe YYYY – were those statements
adequate?
Trainee: Yeah.
Mentor: It’s really difficult when you’re teaching; you sort of think back to the
teaching, and sort of thinking “Right, what did I have to wade in to
help with?”
Trainee: They’re a bit, pressure; they’re a bit… That was more J…. than Z…….
Mentor: I seemed to need to do quite a bit of explaining of basics.
Trainee: Yeah, today I… For the starter I did the water cycle, because someone
didn’t even know what evaporation or condensation was.
Mentor: They do it in primary school.

11. Evaluation
• This is XXXX and YYYY discussing Y's lesson after he's
taught it this morning. It's the 29th of November. So
erm Y how do you feel the lesson went? What
evidence for learning was there in the lesson?
• Not perfect or consistent application!

12. Mentor lesson evaluation
Mentor: So you were observing a cluster of three boys.
Trainee: Yeah. I’m not sure if none of them really had an ideal lesson let’s say
today. So they came in um I said one two and three, so one is, what’s his
name?
Mentor: TT.
Trainee: TT, two is JJ and three is AA. So JJ came early and he first sorted out
his problems with his detention because he didn’t know what it was about.
So, he didn’t even get to do the starter because after this he was thinking
about his detention. And then, the two others arrived shortly after him and
they got into a conversation so they were just talking, the three of them
doing something else. TT at one point started singing. So they didn’t do
anything. JJ and AA, they opened their books, I think because they used to
do something at the back of the books, but it wasn’t even the back of the
book. They opened the books at the front.

13. Themes from ‘informant’ interviews
Themes Trainees Mentors
Teaching approaches (pedagogy) 22 9.5
Amendment to RL during evaluation 4 4
Student participation/progress 16 11
Student-focused observation 12 10.5
Collaboration 12 13
Potential of lesson study 7 16
Summative evaluations of RL 5 7
Teacher learning 10 8
Impact on practice (changes proposed or
implemented as a result of LS
12 21

14. Interim sub-analysis of teacher learning
Trainees
• Student-related learning
and impact on practice
• Learning from mentors (as
models)
• Pedagogy
• On learning and observing
learning
• Evaluation of teaching
Mentors
• Student-related learning
(from trainee feedback)
• Learning from the students
• Learner-responsive
• Pedagogy
• On learning and observing
learning
• Their ways as teachers
(habits): eye-opening
• Lesson study process

15. Mentors on LS in ITE
• ‘Thinking about the students, not what your aim of
the lesson is’ (M1).
• Opportunity just to observe learners (rare)
• Speed of teaching
• Seeing from the learners’ eyes
• Group dynamics and peer support
• Not always assume the worst! Learning about
themselves (M2)
• Learner-responsive approach being embedded?

16. Mentor learning about herself
• I think it’s just taught me that it’s really easy to over-react
from the front. When it’s teacher-led, you put
yourself in a position where you need to have their
attention all the time, and the minute that they start
to do, you take it personally. . (M2)
• Mentor reflection/practice resulting from trainee
observation of learners, refining ‘pedagogic literacy’.

17. Trainee learning
• importance of mentor as model
• input and that support
• cannot imagine not having done it
• depth
• learning about learning
• ‘pedagogic black box’; greater awareness
• classroom literacy

18. Exploring the pedagogic black box
• Whereas before you’d plan a lesson and you’d think
I’m just going to show them this picture and get
them to say what they see, you sort of think well
what they, what are the sort of things that are going
to run through their minds. When they look at that
picture, and what activity would go well to draw out
the information …………….. (T1)
• I’m thinking about why I was doing each activity
instead of thinking that’s a good idea, but not having
a reason why it’s a good idea.

19. On feedback about lessons
• I suppose when it was just me being observed, it was all about
what I was doing and how I could have done things better or
different, whereas after the lesson study it was focussing on
what the pupils were doing at each point in the lesson, like
how they were… how many… how many of the starter words
they’d matched up by a certain point, how many they got
right, sort of things I normally wouldn’t know as a teacher
unless… (T2)
• I think it’s completely different to a normal observation but
it’s, it’s I think you also learn a lot from it as well. I think I
learnt a lot from it, like just how my students work. (T3)

20. Classroom literacy
• ……. the way that they thought about it was
different to the way I thought about. I could see that
from their answers and I thought ‘I never thought of
that’. So, I knew I was only picking out the answers I
wanted them to look for, I didn’t think about all the
other things. (T1)
• Growing ‘pedagogy literacy’?

21. Lessons learned
• Importance of learning from students/children
(observing and interviewing in LS)
• Challenges to negative perspectives about students: non-participator
fallacy
• Limitations of upfront view confirmed
• Six mentors challenged about their own teaching (eye-opener);
less of a concern for trainees
• Limited change in roles (‘expert’ dominance)
• Time
• Value of mentor engagement (do they need it more?)

22. Conclusions
• Difficulty of doing LS (mentors)
• Challenge of observation of learning (all)
• Mentors: changing established ways (eyes opened)
• Trainees: looking for ways (flexibility)
• Growth in pedagogic literacy (mentor and trainee)
• Differential learning due to roles/responsibilities
/experience and inclinations

23. Conference theme and lesson study
• Teaching is a complex set of processes that requires
not only cognitive and technical procedures but
also personal and social skills, so that it can address
and respect the whole person. Teachers as
professionals hold views of themselves into relation
to others, the workplace, their students and the
teaching situation. These views may influence the
ways how both teachers face transitions and their
conceptions and practices change over the life
course, as well as how teachers’ professional
development takes place in and across social
contexts.

24. References
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Biesta, G.J.J & Tedder, M. (2006). How is agency possible? Towards an ecological understanding of agency-as-achievement.
Working paper 5. Exeter, The Learning Lives project.
Billett, S. (2007) Including the missing subject: placing the personal within the community. In Communities of
Practice: Critical Perspectives, Hughes, J.; Jewson, N. & Unwin, L. (eds.), Abingdon, Routledge, pp. 55-67.
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classroom pedagogy in initial teacher education: student-teacher perspectives, Conference Paper, Association
for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE) August 2013, Østfeld University College, Halden, Norway.
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Powney, J. and Watts, M. (1987) Interviewing in Educational Research. London, Routledge.
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