Wow!!  Wow!!  Wow!!  Can you tell I liked your research and presentation? I need to know if I can share your findings, particularly the statement:Third, I did not anticipate the impact that planning the actual math lesson and activities instead of a just using a written lesson plan would be to the success of this innovation.  Writing a lesson plan is obviously very important for pre-service teachers, but I have realized that they need to be able to transfer that written lesson plan into the actual plan and materials they will use in their lesson with their students.

That statement is ever so powerful for so many new teachers, as well as us older veteran teachers. Our implementation is much more important that the actual written lesson plan. I cannot say anymore than nicely accomplished.

With many blessings,

Christine Kirchner

This is very powerful. I have been a junior high math teacher for 20 years. Teaching math is a very difficult job! When I first started teaching, it took me years to master my craft so my students were achieving to their fullest potential. I agree 100% that there generally is not a connection between classwork and fieldwork. Wonderful points in your research! Thank you for sharing!

Susan Meredith, NBCT, Ph.D.

Thank you for your feedback Christine and Susan.  Of course you can use any part of the study that you like Christine.  I am doing another round of Lesson Study with my current secondary math methods class and it seems to be going well again. 

Susan,

I am hoping that by gradually implementing my students into their student teaching they will be more prepared when they become full-time teachers.  I found that by having them teach a few times in their practicum classroom during this study that their efficacy really improved as they entered their student teaching.  Thank you for the feedback. 

Jim Mostofo

Thanks, Jim! Good luck! I think your students will greatly benefit from the experience you are providing to them! Thanks for sharing your work!

Susan

My experience as a pre-service teacher was very different. I recall preparing lesson plans that required us to create activities, identify supplementary materials, plan and schedule required tools (audio/visual machinery, physical supplies, and the like), and explain how the lesson would be executed. Indeed, many of our requirements were the development of entire units of study in which every lesson had those components. I also recall doing multiple observations that were followed by reflective writing and critique from a seasoned teacher trainer who wanted to see what techniques, activities, and other tools we gleaned from the observation to apply to our own lesson delivery.

In addition, we were given multiple opportunities (requirements) to present lessons in the methods courses and, to a lesser extent, in "live" classrooms under the supervision of a cooperating teacher. These lesson deliveries were critiqued by instructor, cooperating teacher (where applicable), and peers. Capturing lesson delivery in video form was commonplace to allow us as pre-service teachers to self-critique in tandem with the other reviewers. Lessons were revised based on this feedback, and improvements were expected with the next opportunity to deliver a lesson.

So, it appears that the education pendulum has swung yet again over these last nearly 25 years of my teaching experience leaving me struggling to see the novelty in this approach and fearful that an entire generation of pre-service teachers has been shortchanged as delivery of practice lessons has apparently fallen from vogue. While I concur that the notion is relevant and that pre-service teachers should be given plenty of opportunity to practice, I am not certain that what is described here is new and innovative. That only about one-third of the references are from sources within the last 5 years furthers my concern regarding the level of innovation. The idea is worthwhile; it simply should have continued to be the acceptable norm.

Tim,

Thank you for your feedback.  Pre-service teachers in some courses do create units of study like you mentioned.  These units typically include the written lesson plan and how it might be executed.  I think these plans are not often executed in the college classroom and definitely not in the practicum classroom. 

There are currently many methods classes that have required practicum hours, however, none of those requirements force the students to practice-teach in a real classroom.  In fact, in the class that this study was used the requirement includes 15 hours of practicum observing in a high school math classroom.  There is no mention of any feedback during these observations or definitely no practice instructing.  Therefore, I used the Japanese Lesson Study model to set up my own partnership with a local high school to allow my pre-service mathematics teachers to practice teach in my class and eventually in this assigned practicum classroom.  If you did this sort of thing in the past then I commend your university and education program.  I don't think that is the norm in all programs.  In fact, I attended GCU around 25 years ago myself and I did not teach in front of an actual class of students until my student teaching experience. 

Further, most "innovations" in education have been done before if you want to be honest about it.  Not much is truly "innovative" in that sense.  Education does work in cycles.  Also, the idea of using the Japanese Lesson Study model has not  been used much at all with pre-service teachers.  This approach made popular in Japan allows for a lesson to be collaboratively planned, taught, revised, and re-taught multiple times.  The entire process was found to be beneficial for my pre-service teachers and I am doing another cycle of this research currently.   

Thank you again for your feedback.

Jim Mostofo

Good work, Jameel! I like that you touched on many different aspects of instructional design in the field of mathematics. I know that mathematics courses are much different from most other content areas, so I commend you on taking on such a rigorous research project. I think that the online environment as far as mathematics can come across many challenges. You mentioned several strategies that can assist students in being successful in the semester's objectives. Being a mathematics instructor has a lot of challenges regrading communication between instructor and students because it is not necessarily a class that requires a lot of grammatic writing. However, you are able to put that in perspective through your research and the findings you present in your paper. :-)

Thank you Kristen.  My goal was to prepare my pre-service teachers to be ready for student teaching. 

Thanks for the reply, Jim.

I am glad to see practice lessoon delivery being restored to pre-service training.

Well it is not easy because the prescribed curriculum through CDD and LoudCloud ask for only essays and a few written lesson plans so I have to modify that to meet the needs of the students.  Instead of writing essays about how to teach math I find it much more effective to actually plan and teach math to our class and eventually in a real classroom.  :)

Jim,

First of all let me say that this was very well written and it was a pleasure to read. Lesson Study sounds like a much better approach to a methods class than what I have traditionally seen. The fact that both quantitative and qualitative data were collected really helps to validate the findings.

I was impressed with the process and especially liked that the students were given the opportunity to teach lessons while being observed and even video-taped. The six major findings that you mentioned were all very positive outcomes, and in the future, I feel an added benefit may be that the pre-service teachers who participated may be more comfortable and confident when being observed and critiqued by administrators when they have their own classrooms someday. 

I do hope you will be able to stay in touch with these students to see if there are any long range results of the study. This was an excellent paper and I will be sharing it with the teacher ed department at my university. Thank you!

Thank you for the feedback Cynthia.  There is some research that points out that pre-service teachers who participated in the Japanese Lesson Study were more able to handle administrator feedback/critiques.  This might be due to the amount of reflection and feedback used in this process.  I am hoping to follow up with some of the teachers in the study.  I have observed two of them this week (one is teaching and the other is student-teaching).  I have not asked them yet though how this process might have helped or not helped their transition. 

Jim,

I enjoyed reading your work. I am a firm believer in a dynamic/systematic approach in lesson planning and delivery. Your work is worth publishing and your approach worth exploring.

This is my first feedback for JIR (I am a new faculty in CAS at GCU) and after reading most of the other feedback I realize that I might sound harsh or out of line. This is not my intention, I spent some time reading your work and appreciating your efforts and I hope that you will take these  comments for what they are: "an effort to improve the presentation of your work according to me". So here I go:

- You could improve the flow of the paper by rearranging  and re-ordering some of the "Sections" For example: "Lesson Study Process" and "Theoretical Foundation" in the context of your paper seem to belong together, but as of now they are very disconnected, especially the jump from Lesson Study to the Vygotsky Space.

- One of the reasons why I decided to read your work is because of the word "Mathematics" in the title of your work. If you decide to review/reorganize the paper, it would improve its strength if you could add some references/examples about the impact of your approach into a very specific Mathematical setting. I can see two places where this would be appropriate: when you describe Vygotsky's iterative stages of learning and in the "Summary of Key Findings".

- After reading the paper I have two dominant questions in my head: "How did the high-school students react to the lesson plan (as viewed through their eyes or the the eyes of the field experience teacher)?", and "What are the issues/pitfalls of Lesson Study?". It could be worthed to address them.

That's my feedback. I hope you find it constructive and appropriate. I look forward seeing your work published.

Filippo

Filippo,

This is not harsh at all.  I appreciate the feedback.  That is what this forum is intended to accomplish.  I will look over the areas you mentioned and try to improve them.   Thank you again for your specific feedback.