Laura Formosa

Lesson study or Jugyokenkyu is based on a Japanese model of teacher professional development (PD). This PD model fosters reflective practice and can help teachers to become more effective practitioners. It involves a collaborative process of planning, teaching, observation, evaluation and reflection. This lesson study, which involved two lesson trials, aimed to improve teaching and learning the Maltese language, targeting two classes of Year 3 students, aged 8 years. Each lesson was 70 minutes long and involved students in speaking, listening, reading and writing tasks. The focus was to improve their vocabulary and facilitate comprehension. The tasks supported reading comprehension by enabling students to learn new vocabulary through a multi-faceted approach. Discussions in pairs presented ample opportunities for collaborative learning and to use the vocabulary in context. Furthermore, posing higher order questions stimulated student thinking and promoted critical thinking skills, encouraging students to use more complex vocabulary. The results show that lesson study was beneficial for teachers to plan a well-structured lesson through ongoing collaboration and group reflection. The knowledgeable other was instrumental in lesson design, and in fostering teachers' professional growth.

This report explores the lesson study process undertaken to improve Year 4 students' mathematics problem-solving skills in a Maltese primary state school. It specifically focuses on their ability to identify and apply the correct operations in mathematics problems. A team of educators, including three Year 4 teachers, the assistant head in charge of the year group, the mathematics head of department and members of the Faculty of Education at the University of Malta, collaboratively designed and refined the lesson through two trial implementations. The first lesson trial revealed specific challenges, leading to targeted adjustments. Following changes to the lesson plan, observations during the second lesson trial indicated significant improvements in student engagement and understanding. These findings were shared with the wider school community, leading to the decision by the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) to adopt lesson study as a whole-school approach. The process demonstrated the effectiveness of collaborative planning, on-going reflective practice and continuous improvement in enhancing both teaching practices and student outcomes.

This study explores the process of leading a lesson study, a collaborative teaching approach that involves choosing a team of teachers and a research focus, planning a research lesson, delivering it, followed by a debriefing session aimed to create new knowledge. Originating in Japan, lesson study has gained popularity because of its reported effectiveness to promote reflective teaching and continuous improvement. In leading the lesson study reported in this paper, which focused on facilitating connections with students through group work and discussion, the team included three teachers and a knowledgeable other. Guided by Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development, the lesson study team aimed to build on students' existing knowledge with carefully planned tasks and questions. This lesson study left a profound impact on both educator development and student learning, highlighting the benefits of lesson study as an approach to collaborative teaching. This experience enhanced Physics teachers’ opportunities to explore inquiry-based teaching strategies by researching, sharing, and implementing their ideas. Meanwhile, the Year 11 students with whom the lesson was taught, were introduced to the topic in an interactive manner, and this fostered active engagement and curiosity.