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Session 3. Learning Across Schools: Lesson Study, Collaboratives and Sharing
Objective. Design a cross-school learning network (lesson study cycle, teacher collaborative or reshaped methodological association) and a knowledge-sharing format that works offline.
A good idea in one classroom is a private asset; the same idea in six classrooms is a public one. Moving ideas between schools takes design: someone must decide who meets whom, about what, how often, and in what form the result comes home. This session gives you two reliable ways, lesson study networks and cross-school collaboratives, and one format, the sharing card, so that a teacher in a village school and a teacher in town can use the same page on Monday.
Key ideas
Why cross the school wall
- A single school holds a limited set of ideas, and a small rural school may have one teacher per subject. A network widens the pool of practice, breaks isolation and lets a good idea travel from a school that found it to schools that need it.
- Hargreaves (2019), summarising 30 years of research, uses Judith Warren Little's continuum: telling stories, helping one another, sharing materials, and joint work. In international survey data teachers most often discuss pupils and share resources, and least often work jointly or observe one another. Decide which rung you are aiming for.
- Wenger-Trayner give a useful test for any cross-school group: is there a shared domain (what we care about), a real community (we know and help one another) and a shared practice (tools, stories, tasks we build)? A group with only a mailing list has none of the three.
A lesson study network
- Lesson study is a cycle: set a goal about pupils, study the curriculum and textbook, plan one research lesson together, teach it while colleagues watch what pupils do, discuss, and revise. A network version links three schools, with one team each and a rotating host.
- Seleznyov (UCL) warns that lesson study 'lost in translation' can stop being lesson study. Common drifts: talk only, with no knowledge from the curriculum or research; video instead of live observation; re-teaching the same lesson to another class; no outside expert. Keep the core: the observers watch pupils, not the teacher.
- One cycle per term is realistic: about 2 hours of joint planning, one 45-minute research lesson with observers, and a 45-minute discussion. Ask the district methodist or a university colleague to be the knowledgeable other who keeps the subject idea central.
Collaboratives and the methodological association
- A teacher collaborative is a small cross-school group around one problem, for example Grade 5 fractions. It meets four times a term, and every meeting produces something others can use: an annotated set of pupils' answers, a task bank, a lesson plan with notes on what happened.
- The district methodological association is a ready hub. Change its use: from reports and demonstrations to two or three shared inquiry themes a year. An open lesson becomes a research lesson when colleagues are asked to watch one pupil question and report what they saw.
- Katz, Earl and colleagues found that networks work through the two levels together: the network gives ideas and challenge, the school makes use of them. Build a return path: every visiting teacher reports to their own team within two weeks.
Sharing knowledge so that it travels
- Share what is useful to a teacher on Monday morning: a task, three real pupils' answers with comments, what the teacher changed and what happened. A slide deck of a conference talk is rarely used. Agree one standard one-page format for all schools.
- Work offline first: printed packs, a binder in each staffroom, a shared folder or messaging group as a convenience. Lai and colleagues' review of online communities of practice suggests combining online activity with offline contact, defining roles and designing with care. A platform does not create a community.
- Name a curator, remove pupils' names, put a date and a school on every item, and review the collection once a term. Without a curator a shared folder becomes a heap that nobody trusts.
One lesson study cycle in a network
The knowledgeable other and the subject idea
Lesson study often fails to deepen learning because the team plans a smooth lesson and never studies the subject itself. Mark, Gorman and Nikula describe this for mathematics: novice teams concentrate on building the lesson and miss chances to do the mathematics together, to see how an idea develops across grades, and to predict pupils' answers. A knowledgeable other, such as a district methodist or a university colleague, can prompt these steps.
The role is not that of an inspector. The knowledgeable other asks 'what would a pupil who thinks 0.5 is smaller than 0.25 say?' and helps the team to look at the textbook task more carefully. In a network, one such person can serve three schools and so becomes a cheap and powerful use of expert time.
Designing the return path
Cross-school learning usually breaks at the point of return. Visitors come home enthusiastic, and nothing changes because no one is expecting them. Design the return before the visit: who will the visitor report to, in what form, within how many days, and what small change will the home team try?
A five-line note works well: what I saw pupils do, what surprised me, one idea for our team, one thing I would not copy, one question. The home team uses one idea and sends back what happened. This closes the loop, and the network becomes a conversation instead of a series of visits.
Examples from the classroom
The mixed-age method
Scene. The district methodist in a Samarkand cluster notices that a village school of 8 teachers has a good method for Grade 2 and 3 pupils working in one room. She asks the village team to host the second research lesson. Teachers from the town school watch what pupils do while the teacher works with the other grade, and take back two ideas. The village teachers say, for the first time, that the cluster listens to them.
Insight. A network works best when the small school is a source of practice, not only a recipient.
A card that travelled
Scene. After a research lesson on Grade 5 decimals, a Fergana team writes a one-page card: the task, three anonymous answers (0.5 is smaller because 5 is less than 25; 0.5 is bigger because it is half; no answer), what they changed and one open question. The card is printed and put in staffroom binders in three schools. Two teachers in other schools use the task the following week and write back what happened.
Insight. A card with real pupils' answers can be used on Monday; a slide deck about the lesson cannot.
The folder nobody trusted
Scene. A Bukhara cluster opens a shared folder for lesson plans. In a year it holds 300 files with no dates and no school names. Teachers stop using it. The cluster names a curator who removes duplicates, adds a date and a school to each item, and keeps only items that have a card with pupils' answers. The folder shrinks to 40 files, and teachers start to return to it.
Insight. Without a curator, shared material becomes a heap; trust requires a few good items, clearly labelled.
Common pitfalls
- Letting lesson study become teacher talk with no observation of pupils and no use of the textbook or curriculum.
- Replacing live observation with video, or teaching the same lesson again to another class.
- Treating the village school as a recipient only.
- Building a platform before there is a community that wants to use it.
Design a Three-School Network
- Open the Activity Kit: a SAMPLE cluster of three schools (a town school, a village school and a Russian-medium school), an exchange-ladder audit, a one-year calendar grid and a sharing card. In your own cluster use real schools. (5 min)
- Alone (10 min): fill the exchange-ladder audit for the sample cluster: for each rung (stories, help, materials, joint work, observation of pupils) write what happens now and the evidence.
- Pairs (20 min): choose one model for the sample cluster (lesson study, collaborative or reshaped association) and give three reasons from the audit. Name the knowledgeable other and the topic.
- Groups of four (15 min): fill the one-year calendar grid with 3 cycles, hosts, who observes, the return path to each school team and the hours (use the budget from session 2).
- Part B, Sharing card in 25 minutes: write one one-page sharing card for a research lesson (task, three anonymous pupils' answers, what we saw, what we changed, one question left). Swap with another group; they mark whether a teacher in another school could use it on Monday.
- Alone (10 min): write your leadership task from the Kit.
Your facilitator will guide you through this activity in the session.
Questions to discuss
- Which rung of the ladder is your cluster actually on, and what evidence do you have?
- Which part of lesson study is most likely to drift in your setting, and how will you protect it?
- What does a village school give the network, not only receive from it?
Reflect
- What does a teacher in your cluster know that no other school knows about?
- What is the smallest cross-school exchange you could start this month?
- Who would curate the shared material, and what would they stop doing?
Try it tomorrow
- Ask a methodist or university colleague whether they would be the knowledgeable other for one cycle.
- Write a five-line return note after your next visit to a colleague's lesson, and give it to your team.
- Draft a sharing card for one task you used this month, with three anonymous pupil answers.
Further reading and links
Cross-school learning works when teachers do joint work on pupils' thinking and the results come back to each school in a form that a colleague can use on Monday.