CLR – A Powerful Form of Lesson Study

This article was adapted from Takahashi, A., & McDougal, T. (2016). Collaborative lesson research: maximizing the impact of lesson study. ZDM, 1-14. doi:10.1007/s11858-015-0752-x, which may be accessed for free by clicking on the link.
“Lesson Study” is a translation of the Japanese phrase jugyou kenkyuu, which refers to a set of practices that have been used in Japan to improve teaching and learning for over 100 years. Lesson Study is credited with enabling profound changes in math and science instruction in Japan in recent decades.
Many educators outside of Japan have tried to use Lesson Study in the hope of effecting similar changes in their locales. Lacking first-hand experience with Japanese Lesson Study, and lacking some of the structural supports enjoyed by Japanese teachers, they have implemented lesson study in ways that sometimes varied significantly from how it is practiced in Japan. It should not be surprising that the impact of lesson study on teaching and learning in these circumstances has been uneven.
Dr. Akihiko Takahashi has 19 years of personal experience with Lesson Study as a teacher in Japan. Tom McDougal, who has been working with Dr. Takahashi since 2008, has traveled twice to Japan to observe Lesson Study there first-hand. But we, too, have had a lot to learn about how to effectively translate the practice into the U.S. context. This article summarizes what we have learned.

War denying millions of children an education

Almost 50 million children and young people in conflict areas out of school, says report, with Syrian civil war worsening problem

Almost 50 million children and young people living in conflict areas are out of school, more than half of them primary age, and reports of attacks on education are rising, according to figures published on Friday.

Civil war in Syria has contributed to the sharp increase in reported incidents of children being stopped from accessing education, physically attacked for trying to go to school or having their school bombed, or recruited by armed groups, found Unesco's Education for All global monitoring report (pdf) and the NGO Save the Children. Of more than 3,600 incidents recorded last year, more than 70% occurred in Syria.
The report comes as the Pakistani schoolgirl, Malala Yousafzai, 16, addresses the UN general assembly in her first public speech since she was shot in the head by gunmen on her way to school in Pakistan last October.
Two other secondary school girls, Kainat Riaz and Shazia Ramzan, suffered serious injuries in the attack. The Pakistani Taliban behind the attack threatened further attacks if Malala continued her public outreach, and issued warnings against anyone seen to support her or the principle she stands for: ensuring every girl in Pakistan can access education.
The report found that 48.5 million children between the ages of six and 15 living in conflict areas are out of school. Of that number, 28.5 million are aged between six and 11 and more than half of them are girls.
According to the Unesco report, globally, 57 million children are out of primary school.
One particularly damaging, but often ignored, effect of conflict on education is the proliferation of attacks on schools, said the report, as children, teachers or school buildings become the targets of attacks. Parents fear sending their children to school. Girls are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence.

10 barriers to education around the world

Brought to you by: Write to Learn

on June 2, 2014

Children in poor countries face many barriers to accessing an education. Some are obvious – like not having a school to go to – while others are more subtle, like the teacher at the school not having had the training needed to effectively help children to learn. Here we list 10 major barriers to education, and look at how the Global Partnership for Education is working to overcome them.
1. A lack of funding for education
Image: The Global Partnership for Education
While the Global Partnership for Education is helping many developing countries to increase their own domestic financing for education, global donor support for education is decreasing at an alarming rate.  Total aid delivered for basic education has dropped for three years in a row, resulting in a 16% reduction between 2009 and 2012. Aid to basic education is now at the same level as it was in 2008. This is creating a global funding crisis that is having serious consequences on countries’ ability to get children into school and learning. The 59 developing countries that are GPE partners face a funding shortage of $34 billion over the next four years for primary and secondary education. Money isn’t everything, but it is a key foundation for a successful education system.

Computers in class ‘a scandalous waste’: Sydney Grammar head

Natasha Bita

National correspondent Brisbane

A top Australian school has banned laptops in class, warning that technology “distracts’’ from old-school quality teaching.
The headmaster of Sydney Grammar School, John Vallance, yesterday described the billions of dollars spent on computers in Australian schools over the past seven years as a “scandalous waste of money’’.
“I’ve seen so many schools with limited budgets spending a disproportionate amount of their money on technology that doesn’t really bring any measurable, or non-measurable, benefits,’’ he said.
“Schools have spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars­ on interactive whiteboards, digital projectors, and now they’re all being jettisoned.’’
Sydney Grammar has banned students from bringing laptops to school, even in the senior years, and requires them to handwrite assignments and essays until Year 10. Its old-school policy bucks the prevailing trend in most Aus­tralian high schools, and many primary schools, to require parents­ to purchase laptops for use in the classroom.
Dr Vallance said the Rudd-­Gillard government’s $2.4 billion Digital Education Revolution, which used taxpayer funds to buy laptops for high school students, was money wasted. “It didn’t really do anything except enrich Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard and Apple,’’ he said. “They’ve got very powerful lobby influence in the educational community.’’
Sydney Grammar students have access to computers in the school computer lab, and use laptops at home.
But Dr Vallance regards­ laptops as a distraction in the classroom. “We see teaching as fundamentally a social activity,’’ he said. “It’s about interaction ­between people, about discussion, about conversation.
“We find that having laptops or iPads in the classroom inhibit conversation — it’s distracting.
“If you’re lucky enough to have a good teacher and a motivating group of classmates, it would seem a waste to introduce anything that’s going to be a distraction from the benefits that kind of social context will give you.’’

Successful implementation of education policy relies on teacher involvement (04 April 2016)

Educators from over 30 countries have linked the promotion of education as public good to teacher autonomy, political commitment by governments and the recognition of education unions as agents of change.

Susan Hopgood, during the panel session on the Sustainable Development Goals

The EI Conference of affiliates in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries, organised by Education International (EI), brought more than 150 international delegates from OECD member countries for a two-day seminar to Rome, the Italian capital.
The participants were welcomed to Rome by the EI Italian affiliates who said that they were grateful for the opportunity to host the Conference and contribute to EI’s policy development work. They reminded participants that this was the second time that they had hosted the EI OECD affiliates conference.  Fred van Leeuwen, EI General Secretary, in his introduction to the Conference, highlighted the importance of including teachers and education unions in policy dialogue in order for it to be successful. Framing the policy developments in the light of the current international political, economic and social context, from the post-crisis economy to the refugee influx, van Leeuwen regretted that, too often, Governments do not consult the stakeholders directly involved in education when drafting changes in policy or implementing commitments made at national or international level: “Governments may say one thing in an international meeting but do something completely different back home.”
In this regard, he warned of the increasing tendency on the part of governments to neglect education by leaving it in the hands of edu-businesses and for-profit corporations. He emphasised that, despite the OECD’s evidence that shows that the market in education has a negative impact on student outcomes and deepens inequality, “some governments remain steadfast in their attempts to dismantle their public school systems. We are already seeing the effects of this agenda with the break-up of traditional school systems, particularly in some low-income countries. We see the emergence and spread of privately managed, corporate owned, and in many instances, for-profit schools.” He cited the recent examples ofsuch developments in  the Philippines and Kenya, while in Liberia “the authorities are about to hand over all primary and secondary schools to a for profit corporation”.