Distance Lesson Study in Mathematics: A Case Study of an Italian High School

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic put teachers and students in virtual classrooms, necessitating the Lesson Study to be adapted to such a new context. In this paper, we investigate how the roles of teachers, observers, and students are changing, considering the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as the only medium of communication. The research methodology is based on the Documental Approach to Didactics, including Instrumental Genesis. It is a qualitative internal case study. The data was collected through video analysis. The Lesson Study (LS) methods were based on a cyclic model (co-planning, teaching, observation, debriefing, and revision), adapted to Distance Learning (DL). The topic is about Statistics, starting from the COVID-19 diffused data. The experimental work allowed us to observe the inter-connections between LS and DL. We deduced that ICT could be considered as a resource for the documental genesis, which generates processes aimed at social knowledge mediated by the teacher. We supposed that the observing phase was less invasive than during virtual experimentation. Nevertheless, the observers had difficulties understanding some students' and teachers' emotional aspects and analyzing the group activities. The technological resources were an added value for the LS. We present an LS methodology, entirely carried out through DL. The main value consists of showing both affordability and constraints of the DL with respect to the LS and vice versa.

Culturally crafted Lesson Study to improve teachers' professional development in mathematics: a case study in Italian secondary school

“…LS is just one of the possible teacher education models that can be framed in Cultural Transposition. Probably one of the most emblematic, and others have been shown in previous research (transposition of Chinese problems with variation: Mellone et al, 2019;of the El'konin-Davydov curriculum: Mellone et al, 2020;of the Thinking Classroom: Mellone et al, 2021; of the LS in Distance Education during the COVID pandemic: Ramploud et al, 2021;Capone et al, 2022a, Capone et al, 2022b, or for some other practices the need for Cultural Transposition has been postulated for the exportation of practice (transposition of the Reggio Emilia Approach: Landi & Pintus, 2022).…”

“…We could say that Italian researchers are, at the moment, more interested in the general "philosophy" of LS, with special regards to the collaborative setting for planning a lesson in detail (Capone et al, 2020). From these studies, further experiments are being conducted in Piemonte, Lombardia, Valle d'Aosta, and more recently in southern Italy: Naples (Ribeiro et al, 2019) and Salerno (Capone et al, 2022a;this paper). An essential emphasis is provided to the cultural background in which the teaching processes occur (Bartolini Bussi & Martignone, 2013;Mellone et al, 2019).…”

“…T 1 suggested focusing on Geometry content. The reasons given, with which all other participants agreed, were related to students' difficulties in Geometry at national level (Capone et al, 2022a) Teachers and researchers discussed some possible causes of these failures in Geometry, suggesting different strategies to overcome those difficulties. A discussion arose on the necessity of certain key concepts of the teaching of geometry and their importance for the development of logical thinking (the project group's goal of the research lesson).…”

Lesson-study through Creating Videos by Twinned Teachers: Improving Grade 11 Performance on Rectangular and Cylindrical Prisms

“…Lesson study as a strategy for teaching As earlier indicated, LS is a strategy for teachers to collaborate in the study of mathematical content, discuss learning objectives, plan lessons together, observe the presented lessons and reflect to improve the teaching and learning (Capone et al, 2022). Buchard and Martin (2017) propose the generic process of LS as recruiting participants, choosing the lesson's topic, planning lessons together, researching the lesson's aspects, and discussing and sharing the outcomes after the debriefing sessions.…”

STEM professional development programs for science and mathematics primary school teachers: A systematic literature review

“…Professional development (PD) has always been considered specialized instruction provided by some educational experts at a specific time and location (Guskey, 2002). Teacher PD is the primary key to improving the quality of education (Capone et al, 2022;Desimone, 2011). The role of teachers is not only to convey student performance information but also to decide the progress of the education transformation (Mohd Shahali et al, 2018).…”