Pre-Service Teachers as a Part of Lesson Study Team

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate how pre-service teachers work as a part of the lesson study team. Participants were the first grade lesson study team which consisted of one teacher, two graduate students, two university professors, and two pre-service teachers (2017-2018 academic year) in Mathematics Education Program, Faculty of Education, Khon Kaen University, Thailand. The lesson study team implemented open approach lesson study weekly cycle in the school. Data were collected from two sources. The first, by observing the pre-service teachers during: 1) classroom at school, 2) reflection at school and 3) six reflection meetings during the academic year. Secondly, according to the process outlined by open approach lesson study (Inprasitha, 2017c; 2018 ) , by reviewing the documents from lesson plan, students’ work sheets, the reflection of pre-service teachers and lesson study team, and the observation notes from their classes. The results revealed that 1) in order to collaboratively design problem situations; two pre-service teachers solved the task in the textbook. They and the lesson study team created two word problems and anticipated four students’ ideas. Moreover, they prepared the main materials as well as the supplementary materials such as blocks. Furthermore, they planned the teacher’s role for each step in open approach, 2) pre-service teacher taught by following the open approach, and they changed to post four word problems instead of two problems. The lesson study team observed and took note about students’ ideas. Pre-service teacher asked the question such as how you know during the student’ problem solving and the classroom discussion in order to encourage students to explain their ideas. Every student used the blocks to support their thinking, 3) pre-service teachers and lesson study team reflected about students’ ideas that they were anticipated such as drawing the blocks, using blocks. They also reflected some ideas that they did not anticipate such as using the arrows. Moreover, the pre-service teachers observed the student’ difficulty about place value and their number of blocks. The pre-service teachers and lesson study team developed a broader understanding of their students’ ideas from the various perspectives given by the lesson study team.