Through the Looking Glass: Lesson Study in a Center School

This article examined the role of Lesson Study in a center school located in the southeastern United States through an analysis of a narrative by the school principal. This methodology allowed a level of reflexivity across the research team, who appreciated hearing about the powerful first-hand enactment of the initiative. The paper begins with an analysis of Lesson Study, particularly in special education, and the key tenets of Lesson Study followed by a narrative account of the principal. Subsequent to her story, we explored lessons learned in relation to implementing a system change in a school, namely Lesson Study. We learned that a deeper understanding of school culture, sustaining professional development, and collaborative practice, were significant factors enabling the principal and teachers at the center school to embrace, plan, and implement a successful Lesson Study for learners with significant disabilities. In addition, we learned that Lesson Study plays an important role in teacher and student engagement in teaching and learning at the center school and supports teachers to design lessons that are efficacious in meeting the individual needs and higher expectations of students.


Introduction
The Lesson Study model is originally derived from Japanese education (Saito, 2012). The term 'Lesson Study' or 'lesson research' as Lewis (2009) called it, is translated from 'jugyokenkyu' in Japanese into English as 'kenkyu ' meaning 'study' or 'research' and 'jugyo' meaning 'lesson' (Fernandez, 2002;Fernandez & Yoshida, 2004;Lewis, 2009). Lesson Study is defined as a team of teachers who collaboratively plan a lesson, develop it, discuss its' implementation, teach it to their students while the team observes, analyses the lesson (learning process), and revises the lesson (Fernandez, 2002;Kusnick, 2008;Lewis, 2009;National Research Council, 2002;Stepanek et al., 2007;Stigler & Hiebert, 1999).
Lesson Study was begun in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s by several American researchers such as Lewis, Stigler, Hiebert, Fernandez, and Yoshida following their observations of Japanese education (National Research Council, 2002). Stigler and Hiebert (1999) comprehensively discuss the idea of Lesson Study in their book, The Teaching Gap. Several years after introducing the idea of Lesson Study to the United States, attention to the approach has increased among educators (Lewis et al., 2006). Lewis et al. (2006) states that there are four phases of Lesson Study: (1) In the first phase, the Lesson Study group identifies the topic and sets goals for the students.
(2) The Lesson Study group then reads about the lesson they want to teach and writes a detailed instructional plan.
(3) In the third phase, one teacher teaches the lesson and the other members observe and write their notes.
(4) In the last phase, all members meet to share, discuss, and analyse what they have observed.

Lesson Study in Special Education
Research has shown that Lesson Study helps teachers improve their pedagogical knowledge and encourages them to work collaboratively to enhance their efficacy (Lewis, 2009;Lewis et al., 2009;Puchner & Taylor, 2006). Chia (2013) believes "Lesson Study is probably the most suitable approach to provide SPED teachers an opportunity to deepen their knowledge of subject matter" (p. 342). These improvements among teachers may influence students' outcomes . Also, implementing lesson study could influence students' understanding of concepts and enhance their engagement (Coenders & Verhoef, 2018). Despite the importance of Lesson Study and its potential effectiveness in enhancing teachers and students performance, Norwich and Ylonen (2013), based in the UK, stated the research on Lesson Study in the field of special education is lacking. This paucity of research is also seen in the USA.
The little research there tends to focus more on students with disabilities in inclusive schooling (Mutch-Jones et al., 2012;Norwich & Ylonen, 2013). Most of the reported implementations of Lesson Study in the field of special education have been in inclusive schools focused on learners who experience mild or moderate disabilities. According to Chia (2013), more than 60% of the mainstream schools in Singapore implement Lesson Study. However, modifications were required to implement Lesson Study in schools that serve students with significant disabilities. To meet the needs of learners with significant disabilities, the original Lesson Study approach has been modified by Kee andChia (2011, 2013) to be implemented in special education schools. The modification suggested entails five phases instead of four: Phase 1: This phase begins with creating the Modified Lesson Study team who examine the case history of students with disabilities that are referred by teachers or parents, and then evaluate them. This evaluation process contains several tasks, (a) setting up meetings between the parents and the school's teachers or staff; (b) studying the cases by evaluating the reports of the behavioral or psycho-educational assessment; and (c) studying the results of students' achievement test and self-esteem profile. In this phase, the team completes two major tasks: the first being to study the case, and the second to write the intervention goals.
Phase 2: The purpose of this phase is to design a lesson plan based on the students' Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). That includes four major tasks: (a) determining the purpose of the lesson plan; (b) verifying that the lesson objectives and the IEP match the purpose of the lesson plan; (c) setting up pre-lesson meetings for the team members; and (d) the team members collaboratively preparing a lesson plan with the mentors and coaches in the team (Chia & Kee, 2010).
Phase 3: During the implementation of the lesson by one member of the team, other members observe.
In the debriefing after the lesson, members observing the lesson share their feedback on conducting the lesson.
Phase 4: In this phase, members of the team meet to discuss how to re-conduct the lesson based on their feedback, find the required changes to the lesson, and then re-teach the lesson.
Phase 5: In this phase, all members reflect upon the whole process of the lesson. They share what they have learned, their recommendations for improving the lesson, evaluate the lesson and what students have learned, and document the lesson for future use.
After implementing Lesson Study, Kee andChia (2011, 2013) stated that teachers could learn from this experience. This is an example of a successful implementation of Lesson Study by teachers of students with significant disabilities in center schools. This supports what Stigler and Hiebert (1999) stated that collaborating and implementing Lesson Study in the field of special education helps teachers share their knowledge and learn from each other's experiences.
There is little research focused on Lesson Study in center schools and students with significant disabilities. However, the need for Lesson Study in schooling for students with significant disabilities is clear. It has been suggested that in comparison to students without disabilities, students with disabilities have shown lower levels of achievement (Bolat, 2019;Grumbine & Alden, 2006;Scruggs & Mastropieri, 2004). The need to pay attention to lesson planning is suggested by Chai (2013) "When the student is a learner with special needs, more care and effort will be required in the lesson planning." (p. 340). Learners with significant disabilities will need more specialized and continued intervention. Teaching students who experience significant disabilities cannot be approached through a single pedagogy (Silverman et al., 2010). The process of teaching students with significant disabilities is very challenging and requires substantial professional collaboration (Browder & Spooner, 2011). Lesson Study offers a process to plan a lesson collaboratively, and the collaborative support on how to enact planning; a process that may be helpful.
Lesson Study has at its heart, collaboration. Working collaboratively in a school is an important way to meet the needs of students with greater diversity in abilities, needs, and characteristics (Browder & Spooner, 2011;Chia, 2013;Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). Research has shown collaborative working can improve teachers' knowledge (Mutch-Jones et al., 2012;Penuel et al., 2007). According to Heller et al. (2012) and Roth et al. (2011), in professional development, working collaboratively with other teachers in schools enhances the learning of teachers and students and makes professional development more effective (Penuel et al., 2007). Moreover, through collaborative working, teachers can be influenced by their expert colleagues and gain greater knowledge (Ball & Cohen, 1996), which may motivate them to engage in further collaborative working (Little, 1993). However, working collaboratively or implementing Lesson Study can be a challenge in some cases. In some center schools for instance, in Singapore where there is no assistant or coteacher, it is very hard to work collaboratively (Chia, 2013). Another challenge is that there are factors that might impact collaboration among teachers. Teacher harmony (Bouck, 2007;Isherwood et al., 2011), teachers' knowledge of the curriculum (Mastropieri et al., 2005), and finding enough time to plan for lessons that meet students' needs (Brusca-Vega et al., 2011) are examples of factors that have been noted by researchers to complicate collaboration.

Professional Development Models in Center Schools for Students with Disabilities
Professional development is an important aspect of continuing education for teachers around the world serving to provide valuable updates in knowledge, skills, and training. It is particularly necessary for educators of students with significant disabilities to ensure they remain current with evidence-based curricular plans and design practices, diagnosis of students with disabilities, and in the latest advances in technological assistive devices for these students (Cantrell & Hughes, 2008;Sawyer, 2015). Some commonly used, though often not preferred practices of professional development for special education teachers are seminars and certification programs. However, support for these methods has declined because they tend to be less collaborative and more structured towards individualized training (Orland-Barak, 2010).
According to research conducted by Jovanova-Mitskovska (2010), professional development needs to be ongoing and interactive to be effective. In alignment with these features, the researchers coined this method of professional development 'Continuous Professional Development.' Coaching is one form of professional development that can be conducted on a continuous basis and has exhibited significant success through the incorporation of a mentoring process between more and less experienced special education teachers, as well as collaboration that encourages the sharing of classroom experiences and improvement plans (Barkley, 2005;Costa & Garmiston, 2002).
Research has shown a two-fold benefit with the use of coaching for teacher professional development. Teachers' report and display improvements in instructional planning, implementation, self-evaluation, and logical reasoning. Furthermore, studies also reveal that special education students benefit from their teachers receiving professional development coaching with an improvement in reading, writing, and language skills (Barkley, 2005;Onchwari & Keengwe, 2008).
While a significant amount of research exists on professional development for teachers of students with disabilities within the general classroom setting of inclusive schools, there is limited research on professional development for teachers in center schools. Similar to Lesson Study, but with less focus on its key feature of teacher collaboration, the literature discusses another approach for this student population that has been used in non-center schools. Known as the Mentor-Model, it is a family-focused collaborative professional development model designed to prepare teachers and paraprofessionals to work effectively with students with significant disabilities in an effort to challenge them to communicate and receive feedback to maximize skills and social participation. The authors of this study list the following four specific areas of consideration when designing communication assessment and intervention practices: (1) Collaborating with family members (Petry et al., 2005).
(2) Meeting educational reporting requirements pertaining to managing curriculum goals for students' with significant communication deficits (Agran et al., 2002).
(3) Being able to obtain and use assistive technology to meet the needs of students with significant disabilities and to train all applicable personnel involved with the student communication to assist students in the use of this technology (Lancioni et. al., 2012;Mathisen et al., 2009).
Effective use of the tenets of Lesson Study in the classroom to directly support teachers can improve the communications of students with significant disabilities. Previous success in the traditional school setting lends support for implementing similar strategies within center schools that are specifically designed for educating students with significant disabilities.

Methodology
This analysis of Lesson Study is centered upon a narrative by the principal of the school where the Lesson Study took place. This narrative is contextualized by three co-researchers. Each co-researcher contributed a specific focus, be it methodological, an analysis of Lesson Study, or professional school development. The whole team was involved with the 'Lessons Learned' section as well as paying attention to cohesion and flow.
Narratives involve inquiry that is both highly personal and scholarly to offer a unique perspective on an issue (Clandinin, 2013). It is linked to personal narrative inquiry, which is inspiring in its accessibility and capability to provide theoretical insights into a particular phenomenon (Bochner, 2016). In this article, the phenomenon is Lesson Study, and it presents one principal's story and her personal perspective on some of her experiences with Lesson Study.
The value of capturing the perspectives of school leaders is evident in the literature (Anast-May et al., 2011;Wasonga, 2010). Principals play a critical role in creating schools that are responsive communities to students' diverse learning pathways. The capacity of schools to be proactive and responsive requires that schools, under the leadership of the principal, develop not only their structures, policies, and practices, but the underlying philosophy of the school and the attitudes and beliefs of staff (Salisbury, 2006). This is a complex process of professional development. In hearing the story of one principal's endeavors to initiate Lesson Study in a school for learners with significant disabilities, a level of transparency of practice emerges. This in turn may help others to appreciate the value of why and how Lesson Study contributes to school development. We started our journey armed with a plan but uncertain how to execute the plan. We had many struggles the first couple of years because we lacked the necessary skills to deliver instruction to students with the most cognitive challenges. We were experts in teaching functional skills to our students and we found the change to teaching academics very difficult and extremely frustrating. We found ourselves going in different directions and lacking cohesiveness. I had to come up with a way for the teachers to work together with a shared vision before our journey came to a crashing halt.

Lessons Learned about Lesson Study
Throughout Rachel's story, the following themes emerged; setting a culture for change, sustaining professional development, collaborative practice, pedagogy, and low expectation as important considerations for a principal who embarks on a systemic change at his/her school.

Setting a Culture for Change
According to Stopl and Smith (1994), school culture refers to the values, rules, and principles that teachers, principals, and students as committee members believe. It can be seen from Rachel's story that setting a school culture for change is challenging. "I realized we were going to have to shift our thinking on how to educate our students, and we were about to begin a complete paradigm shift in the way we teach," Rachel said. It requires a principals' in-depth understanding of the school culture to be able to shape the values, rules, and principles for change (Stolp & Smith 1994). Understanding the current school culture and the members' ability in the school was one of the priorities for change in Bayside Center School. Rachel stated, "We had many struggles the first couple of years because we lacked the necessary skills to deliver instruction to students with the most cognitive challenges. We were experts in teaching functional skills to our students and we found the change to teaching academics very difficult and extremely frustrating." Additionally, setting a school culture for change requires teacher and principal collaboration as a significant factor for success (Fullan, 1992;Stolp & Smith, 1992). The collaboration between Rachel as a principal, and the teachers is the cornerstone for successful change in Bayside Center School. She firmly believes in collaboration, saying, "I also knew in order to create a consensus everyone needed to be given the opportunity to share their ideas and opinions. So, to avoid disconnect and resentment, everyone had to be a part of the process. I saw that Lesson Study could deliver those things for me; that it could become the foundation of building a safe and trusting environment to redefine ourselves as teachers." Faith in collaboration was evident in the school as Rachel said, "I feel the best thing about our Lesson Study adventure is that the teachers began to talk to each other about their teaching. I realized then we had begun to tear down the walls of isolation." Collaboration through Lesson Study in school has led to substantial improvement, and "Today, in 2019, all the fear is gone of teachers being observed. It has become the culture of our school for teachers to observe each other teaching and not just through structured Lesson Studies. We now have Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) where groups of teachers meet weekly to create instructional materials that align with our scope and sequences in ELA, Math, Science, and Social Studies." Lesson Study could also improve teachers' performance in school as Rachel said, "So now, years later, we have highly proficient and masterful teachers."

Sustaining Professional Development
The introduction and execution of teacher professional development programs, particularly those representing whole school learning initiatives as in this study, can present challenges for school leaders who often must display strong leadership skills to encourage acceptance while also maintaining interest and sustainability. This study explored the use of Lesson Study at a center school through a narrative presented by the school principal, Rachel, where she describes the intricacies involved in making changes to established instructional methodologies in her school when introducing Lesson Study and the positive results that can be attained. Her experiences highlight the potential for the sustainability of this method of professional development when strategically implemented by dedicated and supportive leadership that is merged with teacher willingness. How teacher's feel about workplace learning conditions has been found to be linked to their feelings about school reform (Inmants et al., 2013).
Principals are tasked with training their teachers to ensure they maintain the skills required for professional effectiveness. To accomplish this, Rachel utilized several techniques that increased the likelihood for sustaining Lesson Study within Bayside Center School. These included displaying proficiency in leadership by taking the initiative to research different professional development models and choosing the best option for her school, obtaining educator buy-in and cooperation, providing regularly scheduled sessions for focused teacher training and implementation, and using instructional data to plan lessons. Studies show that using data with professional development can serve to increase teacher buy-in and acceptance (Schildkamp & Kuiper, 2010).
Extensive research over twenty years by Darling-Hammond & Richardson (2009) reveals that presenting professional development to teachers within an intensive training and collaborative environment increases the likelihood for sustainability into the future. Professional development that is offered on a continuous basis can act as a catalyst for promoting positive change in how teachers instruct students (Wan, 2011). This phenomenon was observed among teachers who participated in a Multi-layered Peer Coaching Model (MPC Model) and who were initially unmotivated, but once the professional development progressed and teachers were able to explore and perceive its value, they were willing to continue implementing it in their classrooms (Meng et al., 2013). Vygotsky (1978) describes this acceptance phase as "internalization" which results in professional development becoming a spontaneous part of the teaching process. In sharing her story, Rachel vividly depicts these initiation, implementation, and acceptance phases among the teachers at her school when she discusses them experiencing a paradigm shift in instructional strategies with initial elements of grief and feeling very frustrated. To help avert this, Stepanek et al. (2007) suggest having teachers celebrate successes at the end of each Lesson Study cycle to encourage continued motivation and use.
Shorter variations of the Lesson Study professional development model have been used to increase sustainability. This can be particularly beneficial with school districts where the existence of scheduled activities or school policies prevent the implementation of a full-scale version of Lesson Study. Research reveals that professional development programs such as Lesson Study can be successfully adopted by educators if they are embedded within the school's schedule of activities (Hubers et al., 2017;Spillane, 2012) such as staff meetings or consultations between teachers and parents (Sherer & Spillane, 2011). The principal at Bayside Center School took the necessary steps to integrate Lesson Study into the currently established organizational routine in her school through weekly Personal Learning Communities as well as weekly training in behavioral management helping to ensure its adoption. Three modified versions of Lesson Study include: 1) Lesson Modelling which utilizes an outside specialist who comes to the school and presents a demonstration of a lesson devised to increase student understanding of a particular concept; 2) Teacher-Initiated Lesson Study Group where teachers who teach related subject matter form groups and consistently work to implement the tenants of Lesson Study within their classroom; and 3) Whole-School Lesson Study Model which has been found to be attractive in schools seeking to reform the present educational posture of their school.

Collaborative Practice
One of the most significant components in implementing a successful Lesson Study is collaborative practice among teachers (Lewis et al., 2004;Watanabe, 2003). Research has shown the necessity of collaborative practice in schools, specifically in professional development and Lesson Study (Norwich & Ylonen 2013;Puchner & Taylor, 2006;Sarkar et al., 2010;Sibbald, 2009). In addition, practicing collaboration in professional development enhances teachers' learning (Borko, 2004). At Bayside Center School, collaboration was an essential element from the beginning. The professional development enacted by the principal extensively relied on collaboration, which eventually led to teacher and student improvement. This confirms what has been found regarding collaborative practice in schools. According to Thibodeau (2008), "Teacher collaboration on matters of instruction has been linked to positive changes in teacher practices, higher expectations for students, the willingness to use innovative materials and methods, and improved student achievement" (p. 55-56). In other words, teacher collaboration can influence both teachers' and students' performance in school. Collaborative practice enhances teachers' confidence, efficacy, and teachers' learning (Abdella, 2015;Borko, 2004;Norwich & Ylonen 2013;Rock & Wilson, 2005). Additionally, a strong relationship has been found between collaborative practice in schools and students' achievement (Bature & Atweh, 2019;Goddard et al., 2007).

Pedagogy
The Lesson Study helped the teachers understand the students. It is very clear that this group of students who attend the center school are incredibly complex learners and require an educational program (IEP) that is individualized and includes appropriate services to support success in learning (Jones, 2017). There exists a discourse related to 'specialist knowledge,' for this group of learners, a body of knowledge that is needed to teach children with this level of complex learning profiles (Snell & Brown 2006). These students require something 'additional' and 'different' that is often spelled out in their IEPs. This 'addition' translates for these children to be something that requires 'specialist knowledge' by those who teach them (Imray & Hinchcliffe, 2014). There is a need to increase in teachers the appropriate knowledge and awareness to effectively locate and implement these learning practices (Marder & deBettencourt, 2015). These teaching strategies were packaged as evidence based practices for children on the continuum of Autism Spectrum Disorders (Wong et al., 2015) but are evident in pedagogy texts for students with significant disabilities (Orelove et al., 2004;Snell & Brown, 2006). They are explicit and systematic instruction with an emphasis on applied behavioral analysis, something the group of teachers found was successful in this study thus, affirming the valuable role for explicit and systematic instruction when teaching learners with significant disabilities.

Low expectations
The principal in this study shared her concerns that at the beginning of the Lesson Study process, there was an issue of low expectations for the students' learning. This is echoed in the literature that is inherent to special education (Turnbull, Turnbull, & Cooper, 2018). Peterson, (2010) suggests low expectations emanate from a prescriptive approach to special education. The impact of negative expectations from teachers can have long term implications (Shifrer, 2016). We agree on the negative implications of low expectations and contend that Lesson Study has proven successful in this study to interrupt the practice of special educators in a center school in a way that focused from diagnosis and intervention to accessing the general education curriculum.

Limitations
A small participant size of seven teachers and one principal are limitations with this study. The inclusion of one center school for this study did not allow for the comparison of similarities or variabilities in the use of the tenants of Lesson Study and how this might affect the results. Although the experiences expressed in the narrative of the school principal can be deemed as accurately stated from her leadership and implementation of Lesson Study in her school, the researchers were unable to directly and regularly observe the full spectrum of the Lesson Study process being enacted within the center school over time from its' initialization to its' present state to ascertain its' impact or make independent conclusions about its' effect upon the teachers and the disabled student population to which it was administered. Having this perspective might have been helpful with further discussion. The use of a small study sample inclusive of the narrative of one school principal may contribute to study bias regarding the process and results obtained in the use of Lesson Study by Special Education teachers within their classrooms.

Recommendations for Future Research
The findings of this study revealed a relationship between Lesson Study in Bayside Center School and an improvement in teacher knowledge and student achievement. It proved successful in interrupting patterns of practice that led to the teachers being able to design academic content in meaningful ways. The process also challenged the teachers to hold higher expectations of the students, something pervasive in special education. Moreover, the literature on Lesson Study in schools of students with significant disabilities is lacking; hence, further research is required to determine the efficacy of Lesson Study in improving teacher knowledge and students performance.
The outcomes indicated that teacher collaboration and professional development play an essential role in the success of Lesson Study. Research is needed to determine other factors associated with the success of Lesson Study in schools of students with significant disabilities.
The results showed that it was not easy for teachers to accept culture change in school and implement Lesson Study; thus, conducting research to understand teachers' perspectives on Lesson Study in schools of students with disabilities would be worthwhile.

Conclusion
The narrative account of Rachel allows for the analysis of a system change, namely Lesson Study in center schools for students with significant disabilities. Throughout the first-person narrative, themes related to some factors that may contribute to successful school change emerged. These were setting a culture for change in patterns of practice within the school, sustaining professional development, and collaborative practice. Methodologically, the centering of these factors in practice through the story of Rachel was effective in bringing them to life and it helped the research team appreciate the valuable role of the reflexivity of the school principal. This emphasizes the need to listen to the stories of practitioners to gain greater insight into the real-life experiences of systems of change.