The US-Japan lessons study collaboration reveals critical lenses for examining practice

Strong claims have been made about the potential of lesson study, a Japanese form of professional development inwhich teachers collaboratively plan and examine actual lessons. We have explored these claims by asking a group of USteachers to engage in lesson study with the support of Japanese teachers. Our findings suggest that to benefit fromlesson study teachers will first need to learn how to apply critical lenses to their examination of lessons. We describethree such lenses (e.g. the researcher lens) and their role in making lesson study powerful. We also discuss theimplications of these findings for other professional development efforts in which teachers attempt to learn fromconcrete examplesof practice.