What is Collaborative Lesson Research?

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Here at George Carey we are constantly striving to make teaching and learning the best it could possibly be and one way that we do this is through Collaborative Lesson Research (CLR). CLR is where teachers across the school come to together with the objective to improve student learning and teaching practices through collaborative action research in classrooms.  CLR takes its inspiration from Lesson Study methods used in Japan, which is a crucial reason behind Japan’s excellence in teaching practices and well-trained teachers.  

Currently, our research theme is in the teaching of maths and more specifically how to build student’s skills in active listening with understanding and responding to others in mathematics. Teachers from across all phases of the school will come together to discuss and plan a lesson around this research theme with help from an outside expert in the field of mathematics. After the lesson is planned in great detail with an aim to address a research question, the lesson will be carried out and observed by all involved in the CLR, this is called the research lesson. The research lesson will be discussed by all professionals involved in relation to the research question and what has been learnt from it.

Why do Collaborative Lesson Research?

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CLR is an effective professional development tool for teachers and allows for deep learning in their own classrooms. Teachers are able to stand back and observe how will children learn and can have professional discussions with other teachers about students learning and the planning of lessons. Furthermore, teachers are able to tap into expertise as they have the opportunity to plan lesson with highly experienced specialists in the field.

The Shanghai Project

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Currently our school is embarking on an exciting journey with Cambridge university called the Shanghai project. We are doing two research lessons in year 5 that will be shared with Cambridge Primary School and a school in Shanghai. Shanghai schools are known for their high quality teaching using problem solving in mathematics. The teachers at all schools involved will have the opportunity to see all the lessons and to learn from the teaching techniques used. In October we carried out our first research lesson as part of this project in the Merlins class, which was a rich experience that all teachers involved learned from.

Collaborative Lesson Research at George Carey