Leadership practices and sustained lesson study

ABSTRACT

Background

The continual improvement of teaching and learning is vital for schools in order to meet the rapid changes in the world around us. Lesson study is considered a valuable professional development approach in that regard. It is focused on teachers collaboratively studying live classroom lessons. Sustaining lesson study, by making its core components part of the school’s organisational routines, can help schools continually and systematically to improve student learning and teaching. However, despite the value of this approach, sustaining lesson study turns out to be complex. Leadership seems to play a crucial role therein, but the question is: how?

Purpose

The study aimed to gain in-depth insight into what leadership looks like in schools that sustained lesson study.

Method

A case study design was used to investigate leadership in two secondary schools. We conducted over 300 hours of observations through immersion within practice, collected school policy documents, and interviewed the school leadership. Data were analysed qualitatively.

Findings

The analysis identified that both schools carried out various leadership practices for sustained lesson study. For leadership at schools that aim for sustained lesson study, it seems important to schedule lesson study, to be available, to have knowledge about lesson study and to appoint a lesson study coordinator. Whether and how leadership practices were carried out seemed to depend on the school’s context – for instance, by the policy reasons for working with lesson study. As such, it is important to examine the school and its leadership in context when considering sustainability.

Conclusion

Through immersion within practice, specific and real-life examples of leadership were identified. This study’s insights could help school leadership to sustain lesson study in their schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Leadership
• leadership practices
• lesson study
• sustainability
• case study
• professional development

Introduction

Continually improving teaching and learning is fundamental for schools in order for them to strengthen, develop, and support learners’ needs. Lesson study is considered a valuable professional development approach in that regard (e.g. Lewis, Perry, and Murata 2006). Sustaining lesson study will help schools continually and systematically to improve student learning and teaching (Ermeling and Graff-Ermeling 2016). However, despite the value of this approach, sustaining lesson study turns out to be complex (Akiba 2016; Wolthuis et al. 2020).

Although leadership has been pinpointed by a number of studies as important for sustaining lesson study (e.g. Cajkler et al. 2015; Groves et al. 2016; Lim et al. 2011; Perry and Lewis 2009), how leadership should be enacted still remains unclear. Schipper et al. (2020) explicitly stress the need for studies into how school leaders could promote sustained lesson study practices. The current study sought to contribute to this aim by focusing on describing and exploring, in depth, leadership in secondary schools that sustained lesson study. A deeper understanding could help schools and school leaders ensure that teachers and students benefit from professional development initiatives such as lesson study in the long term. More generally, we seek to provide insights into the complexities of sustained professional development and the role that leadership can play. However, in advance of describing our study in more detail, we situate our research in the wider context of lesson study, and provide an outline of the conceptual framework that underpinned our approach.

Background

Lesson study and sustained lesson study

Lesson study is a professional development approach focused on collaboratively studying live classroom lessons (Lewis, Perry, and Murata 2006). With a long history in Japan, it has been used in the majority of the schools there since the late 1990s (Saito 2012), and is now used worldwide (Stigler and Hiebert 2016). Lesson study is considered ‘a process for optimizing innovation, development and implementation of effective classroom learning’ (Dudley et al. 2019, 215). Small groups of teachers investigate their students’ learning and teaching practice, with the aim of systematically improving teaching and student learning in classrooms (De Vries, Roorda, and Van Veen 2017; Lewis, Perry, and Murata 2006), while going through a research cycle that consists of five phases (Stepanek et al. 2007). First, a clear research goal is defined. Second, a research lesson is planned. A research lesson is a lesson that is observed live and researched by the lesson study team (Murata 2011). In this phase, teachers spend time studying teaching materials and articles, and discussing them as well as their own ideas. Third, the research lesson is taught and observed live. After the lesson, the members of the lesson study team engage in a post-lesson discussion about the research goal. Fourth, the research lesson is adjusted and taught again, followed by another post-lesson discussion. Fifth, the group reflects on the entire lesson study process and formulates their gains, which they share with their colleagues in the school.

The characteristics of lesson study are closely connected with features of effective professional development (Perry and Lewis 2009), such as focus on content and evidence, collective participation, coherence between activities, active learning and covering a longer time span (e.g. Lewis, Perry, and Murata 2006; Penuel et al. 2007). Lesson study is regarded as an effective and widely accepted professional development approach. Several small-scale studies found effects on teachers’ knowledge and skills in general (e.g. Lee and Tan 2020; Lewis and Perry 2017; Vermunt et al. 2019; Willems and Van den Bossche 2019), and more specifically, on pedagogical content knowledge (Coenders and Verhoef 2019). This can, in turn, affect student learning (Dudley et al. 2019; Lewis and Perry 2017).

When lesson study is used schoolwide and continually, and thus is sustained, it helps schools to work systematically and sustainably on school improvement in terms of student learning and teaching (Ermeling and Graff-Ermeling 2016). But what does sustained lesson study entail? Considering sustainability from a fidelity approach (Anderson 2017) could mean that lesson study is understood and performed exactly as it is done in Japan. As lesson study has been a part of Japanese schools for decades, lesson study became a ‘cultural practice that evolved in a context that, almost by definition, supports it’ (Stigler and Hiebert 2016, 584). Lesson study as such might therefore be difficult, even impossible, to implement in other settings (Akiba 2016; Stigler and Hiebert 2016; Seleznyov 2018; Wolthuis et al. 2020). As described above, lesson study is embedded in Japanese education. International implementation is found to be a challenge (Seleznyov 2018); for instance, whereas school structures are facilitative of time to work with lesson study in the Japanese context, this is not necessarily the case in educational contexts elsewhere internationally (Seleznyov, Goei, and Ehren 2021). Various scholars (e.g. Perry and Lewis 2009; Seleznyov 2018; Stigler and Hiebert 2016; Takahashi and McDougal 2016) therefore proposed to look at the most important elements, or core components, of lesson study. Taking the local adaptations approach allows for adjustments to the practice, as long as teachers adhere to its core components (Quinn and Kim 2017). This is in line with previous studies on sustainability that identify sustainability of professional development approaches as achieved when its core components (in this case, lesson study’s core components) are part of the organisational routines (e.g. Bambara et al. 2012; Bean et al. 2015; Larsen and Samdal 2008; Tam 2009). We will describe this further in our conceptual framework.

For sustainable professional development, leadership is assumed to be vital (e.g. Harris and Jones 2010; Lim et al. 2011). In this study, we consider school leadership from a distributed leadership perspective. School leadership, from this perspective, concerns all activities tied to the core work of the school that are designed by the school’s staff members to influence the motivation, knowledge, or practices of other members of the school organisation and that can be carried out by different staff members (Harris and DeFlaminis 2016; Spillane 2006; Woods and Roberts 2016). We study leadership through a distributed leadership lens. Distributed leadership is not perceived as the actions of one leader but, rather, as the process of executing particular leadership practices in interactions between leaders, followers and the environment (Spillane 2012; Woods and Roberts 2016). This perspective allows for a deeper understanding of how leadership functions in the organisation and, specifically, in the implementation processes.

Several systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses about successful leadership have been conducted (Hendriks and Scheerens 2013; Leithwood, Harris, and Hopkins 2008, 2020; Robinson, Lloyd, and Rowe 2008). Based on a comparison of these frameworks and reviews, three core functions of leadership were identified: organising and (re-)designing the organisation, managing the teaching and learning programme, and understanding people and supporting their development. Below, we summarise the leadership practices related to these core functions that can be found in studies on leadership for sustaining professional development approaches and/or for (sustained) lesson study.

Organising and (re-)designing the organisation: For the first core function, it is important to have a vision related to lesson study (Lee and Tan 2020; Perry and Lewis 2009), making it clear why the school works with lesson study. Additionally, making a priority of lesson study through facilitating the availability of resources (Brown and Flood 2020; Lim et al. 2011) is vital, especially since lesson study is a very time-consuming activity (Saito 2012). Crafting coherence between lesson study and the school’s goals is also important (Perry and Lewis 2009; Postholm 2019; Pyhältö, Soini, and Pietarinen 2011), because it makes lesson study part of the school organisation and teachers’ daily lives (Datnow 2005). This is done by coordinating new processes in the school throughout the whole school, at different systemic levels, and over time (Pyhältö, Soini, and Pietarinen 2011).

Managing the teaching and learning programme: This core function is characterised by the practices of planning, monitoring, and evaluating the teaching and learning programme, in this case with reference to lesson study. To our knowledge, leadership practices related to this core function have not been sufficiently investigated specifically in conjunction with sustainability or sustained lesson study. However, we expect that these practices are connected with sustained lesson study, as lesson study focuses on improving teaching and learning in schools.

Understanding people and supporting their development: Regarding the last core function, providing support is important. This could, for example, be done by acting as ‘cheerleaders, information gatherers and interpreters’ (Perry and Lewis 2009, 386) and helping others during the process, and can help lesson study to take root in the school and flourish (Lim et al. 2011; Van den Boom-Muilenburg et al. 2022). Leadership’s availability contributes to a positive school culture (Hollingworth et al. 2018) and helps them gather teachers’ input in formal and informal ways (Mullen and Jones 2008), so possible concerns emerge and can be responded to. Leadership’s knowledgeability and modelling can help support the values of lesson study (Groves et al. 2016), such as ‘a culture of self-criticism, openness to the ideas of others and willingness to embrace mistakes’ (Hart and Carriere 2011, 37), and help show the value of the success of the programme to the school (Larsen and Samdal 2008). Establishing connections with external experts, such as recognised researchers or trained coaches, contributes to staff members’ intellectual stimulation that is important for sustainability (e.g. Andreou et al. 2015; Bean et al. 2015).

Conceptual framework

Lesson study’s core components are considered elements that make lesson study work, or are – in other words – ‘underpinning expectations of impact on teaching and learning’ (Seleznyov 2020, 180). Based on various studies (e.g. Goei et al. 2021; Perry and Lewis 2009; Stigler and Hiebert 2016; Takahashi and McDougal 2016; Wolthuis et al. 2020), the following core components of lesson study can be identified: (i) Question or issue from teaching practice related to student learning as starting point; (ii) Use of publications, lesson material and expertise; (iii) Designing of the research lesson (including observation forms); (iv) Live observation of student learning during the research lesson; (v) Post-lesson discussion; (vi) Adjustment and re-teaching of the research lesson based upon post-lesson discussion, followed by a final reflection; (vii) Sharing of results with others outside the lesson study team. For the purposes of our research study, we regarded these as central elements of lesson study.

For lesson study to become sustainable, we expect these core components to become part of the school’s organisational routines. Organisational routines are described as ‘repetitive, recognizable patterns of interdependent action, carried out by multiple actors’ (Feldman and Pentland 2003, 96), structuring who acts and how someone acts in interaction with others (Spillane 2012). An example of an organisational routine within the school context can be a regular department or leadership meeting (Sherer and Spillane 2011) and the setting-up of lesson study meetings (Wolthuis et al. 2020). Within the definition of organisational routines, a distinction is made between the ostensive and the performative aspects. The ostensive aspect refers to the idea or ‘perception of what the routine is’ (Feldman and Pentland 2003, 101). The performative aspect refers to the enactment or the ‘specific actions taken by specific people at specific times when they are engaged in an organizational routine’ (Feldman and Pentland 2003, 101–102). In this study, we focus on an important part of the ostensive aspect, namely, the school’s policy related to lesson study; the performative aspect refers here to the actions of the school’s staff members that are related to lesson study.Analysing both aspects of organisational routines is crucial when studying the sustainability of professional development. It provides insights into both the policy and actions related to the professional development. In that way, how professional development, in this case lesson study, could be organised and supported can be pinpointed. The variation and interplay between both of these aspects can thus provide insights into what makes this professional development approach sustainable (Feldman and Pentland 2003; Spillane 2012).

Purpose

The aim of this study was to describe and explore, in depth, leadership in secondary schools that sustained lesson study. In our chosen conceptual framework, we have explained how sustained lesson study may be achieved by making lesson study’s core components part of the ostensive and performative aspects of the school’s organisational routines. This means that the core components are visible in the school’s policy and the actions of staff members. Our first research question, therefore, was: What does sustained lesson study look like in secondary schools, in terms of the organisational routine’s ostensive and performative aspects? Further, although the conceptual framework indicates that leadership is crucial for sustained lesson study, it remains unclear, however, what leadership for sustained lesson study looks like in practice. Based on multiple studies on leadership for sustaining professional development approaches and/or for (sustained) lesson study, we therefore formulated our second research question to explore this: What does leadership look like in these schools, in terms of organising and (re-) designing the organisation, managing the teaching and learning programme, and understanding people and supporting their development?

Method

To obtain insight into sustained lesson study and leadership in secondary schools that sustained lesson study, we undertook an in-depth qualitative study of two cases (Yin 2014). Therefore, an extended observation period and semi-structured interviews were carried out. These different data sources were used for triangulation purposes, by checking whether independent measures were in agreement, or, at least, did not contradict each other (Burke Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004; Miles, Huberman, and Salda 2014). Moreover, they were used for complementarity reasons, for seeking elaboration, enhancement, illustration, and clarification of the results of one method with results of the other method (Meijer, Verloop, and Beijaard 2002). We chose this design for specific purposes: namely, to explore and describe in-depth sustainable lesson study and leadership practices in schools with sustained lesson study.

Ethical considerations

The study was approved by the ethical committee of the first author’s university. The participants were introduced to the research through an information flyer with information on the researcher and specific study. They were informed about the details and purpose of the study. We assured participants of confidentiality and explained that data would be anonymised and stored encrypted. Additionally, we informed them that participation was voluntary; if they wanted to opt out at any point during the study, they could email the researcher and their data would be deleted. When reporting the findings, participants were assigned pseudonyms and names of people and specific locations were removed.

Data collection

Two schools participated in this study: Schools B and E. These schools were selected based on the criteria that they kept working with lesson study after the implementation phase, considered lesson study to be relevant for school improvement and explicitly intended to keep working with lesson study. Both schools were located in the Netherlands. The school system in the Netherlands is decentralised and there is no national curriculum. Teachers teach towards core curriculum standards, but these objectives are general (OECD 2008, 2010). Schools thus have the freedom to decide what and how they want to teach, and to implement professional development approaches such as lesson study.

The schools were selected based upon purposive sampling out of two different projects. The first project, led by one of the researchers in the study, was a Lesson Study Professional Learning Network project with 14 schools, for teachers of maths and Dutch, who were trained to work with lesson study and prepared to disseminate it in their own school. Two of these schools with whom the university had good contacts were asked, by email, whether they wanted to participate. After face-to-face conversations, School E agreed. Another lesson study project, led by two of the researchers in this study, started with a small group of schools from one school board.¹ Face-to-face conversations were held with several of these schools, and School B agreed to participate in the study. Below we provide further relevant and anonymised characteristics of both of the case study schools.

School B was a secondary pre-vocational level school. With approximately 200 students, approximately 20 teachers and two school leaders, it could be considered a small school. School B had a strong focus on students’ wellbeing and personal development. Five years prior to this study, the inspectorate of education had assessed the education at the schools under the same board as insufficient. There was therefore an urgency to improve. The school board decided that all of their schools should start working with lesson study. To prepare for this, a four-day training course was organised by the university four years prior to this study, in which participating teachers and school leaders from the different schools conducted lesson study in the afternoon under the guidance of an experienced facilitator. In between meetings, arrangements were made to perform the research lesson at their own school. Six teachers and the school leader from School B took part in this, and together formed a lesson study team. As a start for lesson study at all schools, a lesson study event for all teachers and school leaders was organised in the local theatre at the beginning of the following year. School B did not immediately start with lesson study, but used this year to prepare well for a school-wide start with lesson study the following year.

School E was a secondary senior general and pre-university level school. With approximately 800 students, 50 teachers and two school leaders, it could be considered an average-sized school. School E had a strong focus on students’ intellectual stimulation. Nine years before the end of this study, three teachers from School E voluntarily participated in a four-year Lesson Study Professional Learning Network project (for more information, see De Vries and Prenger 2018), at the request of a school leader. There, teachers were guided towards becoming a lesson study facilitator at their own school. At the end of that four-year process, these three teachers continued with lesson study in consultation with the school leader at the school. As the school management felt that value had been added, they decided to scale up to include all teachers.

To undertake the data collection, the first author attended each of the schools for an extended observation period of approximately 170 hours, divided over six successive weeks per school. Staff room discussions and behaviours, lessons, and meetings were observed. As the observation period was so extended, it was not possible to make recordings. Instead, field notes were taken on paper and digitally. At the end of each day, the information from the field notes was put into an organised form by being entered into a logbook. The logbook included prompts related to leadership and the sustainability of lesson study, as described in the theoretical framework. Examples of prompts were: What was observed with regard to sharing lesson study results? and What was observed with regard to leaders’ understanding of people and supporting their development? The first author completed a logbook, based on field notes, for each day of observation at the school. As a part of the field work, shadowing (defined as ‘a semi-structured, undisguised, participant observation occurring in the field’ (Tulowitzki 2019, 103)) was also carried out. The formal school leaders (i.e. principal and assistant-principal) were shadowed for a day. Policy-related documents, such as vision statement documents and policy plans, were also collected. When teachers or school leaders mentioned documents that were related to the subject of this research (e.g. the lesson study coordinator’s document on the current state of affairs of lesson study at School E), they were asked to share these documents. After the observation period ended, a report was written for each school. In this report, a descriptive overview of the observation period was provided. This report was discussed in a meeting with the school leaders. Therefore, the report served as a member check. Only a few minor comments were made, for example, regarding formulation/phrasing of the school’s vision.

Three leaders were identified and invited to participate in a semi-structured interview about lesson study at their school one year after the observation period, based upon a social network questionnaire that had been administered earlier (Van den Boom-Muilenburg 2021). We invited one formal leader (i.e. the school principal) and two staff members who were central actors in the social network that focused on conversations about lesson study. The digital video-interviews had an average duration of one hour, were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. We used a semi-structured interview protocol (see Figure 1), in which we asked the leadership about lesson study at the school. We focused on the ostensive aspect (i.e. policy related to lesson study) and the performative aspect (i.e. actions related to lesson study’s core components). The protocol was pre-tested with a researcher colleague who was also a teacher. The transcripts were sent back to leaders for a member check and no adjustments had to be made.

Figure 1. Interview protocol (translated from Dutch).

Data analysis

The logbooks, collected documents and interviews were analysed with the use of data analysis software (Atlas.ti). To address transferability (validity), we elaborated on the choice of these specific schools in the procedures section and explained the context in depth. Additionally, we worked on dependability (reliability) by explaining the steps we used to perform the comparative analysis. Finally, we corroborated (objectivity) our findings by using quotations from the interviews to illustrate our findings, and discussed them with each other (as described below). This helped us to be disciplined in not deviating from what was observed or said (cf. Lincoln and Guba 1989).

Our analysis technique consisted of multiple steps (Creswell 2013). First, the data were prepared, organised, and anonymised. Second, the data were coded. Initially, one researcher identified all segments. Codes were assigned to each segment that contained information about the study’s focus. These codes were based on sensitising concepts related to (sustained) lesson study (i.e. core components, ostensive aspect, performative aspect) and leadership (i.e. organising and (re-)designing the organisation, managing the teaching and learning programme, and understanding people and supporting their development), which provided a general sense of reference and guidance in approaching our data (Bowen 2006). If no such information was described (e.g. a description was given of the researcher’s feelings or of an appointment that was made), the segment was not coded. Our final coding schema can be found in Table 1.

Table 1. Coding scheme for logbooks, documents, and interviews.

LEADERSHIP PRACTICES	Code definition	Coded example
Organising and (re-)designing the organisation
Vision and goals	The (development of) vision (i.e. an idealised goal that must be achieved by the organisation in the future)	‘Every school uses lesson study to enhance teachers’ professional development.’ (document)
Crafting coherence	Coordinating processes in the organisation throughout the whole organisation, at different systemic levels, and over time: for example, making sure that teachers know what the policy documents entail/translate them into practice	‘We combined it with formative assessment. It is a focus of our school and we use lesson study as a tool to look at the effects of formative assessment on student learning.’ (interview)
Resourcing and facilitation	Resourcing, such as human resource management and positioning people, and facilitating use of time and other resources (money, hiring experts, purchasing new materials)	‘Staff members who participate in lesson study are supported with 10 task-hours.’ (logbook)
Managing the teaching and learning programme
Planning	Planning of the curriculum, teachers’ instruction and functioning, and lesson study	‘Lesson study meetings are added to the school’s yearly calendar.’ (logbook)
Monitoring	Monitoring of the curriculum and teachers’ instruction, such as lesson visits or performance interviews, and lesson study	‘During the annual department meeting, the staff members are asked about the state of affairs of lesson study in the department.’ (logbook)
Evaluating	Evaluation of the curriculum and teachers’ instruction, such as evaluation interviews, and lesson study	-
Understanding people and supporting their development
Providing support	Providing support, coaching and empowering	‘We help lesson study members with developing, for example, observation forms.’ (interview)
Being available	Availability, such as being present at the school and participating in meetings, and offering a sympathetic ear for work-related aspects	‘The principal’s office door is often open and staff members walk in and ask questions or discuss problems.’ (logbook)
Connecting	Connecting people, such as bringing people together or organising collaboration (also with partners external to the organisation)	‘Luckily, we know [university employee]. We can reach out and ask [university employee] for literature related to the subject of our lesson study.’ (interview)
Modelling	Showing how to be involved, engaged and participate in lesson study	‘The assistant principal and all teachers participate in lesson study.’ (logbook)
Being knowledgeable	Being well informed about lesson study and having procedural and conceptual knowledge about it	‘The lesson study coordinator answers questions about lesson study.’ (logbook)
Motivating	Providing someone with a reason for performing lesson study or showing why lesson study is important	‘The lesson study coordinator (…) talked enthusiastically about lesson study and what various departments gained from it.’ (logbook)
SUSTAINABILITY	Code definition	Coded example
Core components	Lesson study’s core components: 1. Start with a question or issue from teaching practice related to student learning 2. Study data, publications, lesson material and share expertise 3. Design research lesson (including observation forms) and write out research lesson plan 4. Teach research lesson, live observation of student learning, and collection of data 5. Engage in post-lesson discussion 6. Adjust and re-teach the research lesson, engage in post-lesson discussion, followed by a final reflection 7. Share results with others outside the lesson study team	‘Let’s talk about the observation form. We used that always and thoroughly, because that is what lesson study is about: observing students.’ (interview)

Subsequently, the codes were compared and categories were identified in order to confirm the findings in our conceptual framework and to describe, in depth, what the phenomena look like in practice. For example, categories were ‘similar leadership practices’ and ‘differences in leadership practices’. Lastly, we combined the categories into themes. The segments, codes and categories were discussed thoroughly among the researchers to reach agreement on how they perceived the codes and categories and what sustained lesson study and what leadership looked like in the two schools.

Findings

The in-depth analysis of data allowed us to address our research questions. The findings from our study form a picture based on our analytical exploration of the observations, documents and interviews. We first describe what sustained lesson study looked like at Schools B and E, in terms of the ostensive (policy) and performative (actions) aspect of the organisational routine (research question 1). Secondly, we describe what leadership related to lesson study looked like in those schools, in terms of organising and (re-)designing the organisation, managing the teaching and learning programme, and understanding people and supporting their development (research question 2). Anonymised quotations from the interviews (translated from Dutch into English) are included where relevant to illustrate and illuminate the findings.

What sustained lesson study looked like in the schools

Ostensive (policy) aspect

Lesson study was part of school policy in various ways. First, we identified that it was part of the school board’s four-year plan at School B, which specified the use of lesson study to support teachers’ professional development. It was also mentioned in School E’s four-year plan as a way for teachers to work on professional development. Second, lesson study was found in the yearly planning of both schools: meetings and an afternoon to share results were included in their calendar.

Performative (actions) aspect

An overview of the actions related to lesson study’s core components, or the performative aspect, is presented in Table 2. All of lesson study’s core components were performed by both schools. At School B, the performance of two core components stood out. Since the principal had decided to use lesson study to work on formative assessment, which was part of the school vision, teachers were asked to link their own question or issue (core component 1) to this. Studying data, publications, lesson materials, and sharing expertise (core component 2) were all experienced as difficult by teachers. One teacher, for example, said, ‘How do I do that? (…) How do I do that well?’. School B’s teachers, ‘luckily’ according to one of them, had close contacts with a researcher at the university whom they asked for help in searching for publications.

Table 2. An overview of the actions related to lesson study’s core components.

Core component	School B	School E
Question or issue from practice	✓	✓
Study data, publications, lesson material, and share expertise	✓	✓
Design research lesson (including observation form)	✓	✓
Teach research lesson, observe, collect data	✓	✓
Engage in in-depth conversation	✓	✓
Re-teach and discuss, final reflection	✓	✓
Share results with others outside lesson study team	✓	✓

At School E, the second core component, studying data, publications, lesson materials, and sharing expertise, was ‘skipped’, according to the principal and lesson study coordinator. It was felt that this core component could make lesson study ‘too theoretical’, and was described as ‘administrative hassle’. The principal mentioned that making the core component mandatory ‘makes it extra tricky, (…) and might lead to resistance’. Although they did not use publications, they did share expertise and looked at lesson materials to develop the research lesson; therefore, the second core component was still partly performed.

What leadership related to lesson study looked like in the schools

Organising and (re-)designing the organisation

School B’s vision for lesson study was that it should be used as a tool to realise the school’s educational goals: namely, formative assessment. However, it was regularly emphasised that lesson study had been introduced by the school board. The principal, for example, commented, ‘there is still the idea that lesson study is imposed on us by the school board’ and the lesson study coordinator saw it as ‘a professionalization method for teachers that was chosen by the school board’s director’. Lesson study thus entered the school top-down. Nonetheless, with their focus strongly on crafting coherence, School B’s leadership worked to take the best steps forward that they could over the year. For instance, they created connections between lesson study and other activities in the school, to ‘make lesson study attractive’ and useful. All staff members agreed to work with formative assessment for improving their classroom practices. Therefore, lesson study was positioned as a tool for working on formative assessment and every lesson study was supposed to be focused on that. As a result, staff members were ‘intrinsically motivated to realize that combination’. Meanwhile, at School E, lesson study came into the school as a result of interplay between leaders and teachers. The vision for lesson study was that of promoting professional dialogue and professional learning. One of the principals mentioned, as a result of this, ‘developing lessons together, discussing the lessons and talking about what they want to achieve’ with lessons and education in general. Crafting coherence between lesson study and school goals was not identified at School E.

At both schools, lesson study was facilitated by clearing schedules for lesson study meetings and sharing lesson study results, and for teachers to participate in coaching and training related to lesson study. Additionally, the assistant principal at School B and a teacher at School E were appointed as lesson study coordinators. Lesson study was added to their task assignment, and the teacher at School E received 70 hours per year to fulfil this role. The assistant principal at School B reflected that being a lesson study coordinator involved wanting ‘lesson study to succeed and that we can benefit from it from a professional point of view’. Both these professionals organised lesson study, communicated about lesson study and served as the primary contact for lesson study within the school.

Managing the teaching and learning programme

The leadership at both schools planned lesson study meetings one year beforehand and placed them in the annual calendar. At School B, these meetings were planned to fit within a shortened time schedule (lessons of 40 instead of 50 minutes), so the staff members had more time to engage in lesson study. At the same school, monitoring took place by means of lesson observations. During those observations, the leadership identified improvement areas related to, for example, classroom management. Lesson study was deployed as a method for working on those areas with formative assessment. At School E, lesson study was a topic of conversation during the performance review. They then asked about the teachers’ experience with and results from lesson study. Additionally, lesson study was a topic of conversation in the annual meetings between the principals and each department. The use of lesson study was thus monitored at both schools; it was not evaluated, however.

Understanding people and supporting their development

We found that the leadership at both schools was available for understanding and developing people: they had an ‘open door policy’, offered a sympathetic ear when necessary and were often present in the staff room. Leaders had their lunch there and were always at hand to engage with questions: for example, ‘can I ask you real quick … ’ was the start of a sentence that was often heard. This seemed like an accessible way to reach out and be reached. The leadership was knowledgeable, which was evidenced by their understanding of lesson study’s content and procedures and their ability to answer questions about lesson study. For instance, they responded to questions about ‘the performance of the steps’ or ‘the development of observation forms’. Additionally, the leadership had attended an international lesson study conference to improve their knowledge about lesson study. One of School E’s principals read about lesson study in magazines, which were photocopied and spread throughout the school. Additionally, the lesson study coordinator celebrated the results, for instance, ‘with cupcakes’, explaining that this was because they had been made aware of the importance of celebrating successes in lesson study (see, for example, Dudley 2014).

The leadership at School B established connections between the school and the university. For example, they asked their contacts at the university to give a presentation about lesson study, organised a study day and asked them for publications that could push their lesson studies to another level and be used for the second core component. Such connections were not observed at School E. The leadership at both schools modelled by actively engaging in lesson study, thereby showing what they wanted to see from their staff members. Support at both schools was provided through lesson study booklets that gave in-depth explanation of the steps. Additionally, at School B, meetings for staff members to discuss issues were organised. Examples of such issues were ‘the second step’ and ‘how to facilitate the lesson study discussion in the right way’. They also answered questions about lesson study. At School E, observation formats were checked and collaboratively developed with the lesson study team, questions about lesson study were answered, and inspiration for foci for lesson study were shared, based on previous lesson study experiences. For the latter, they talked about ideas for future lesson study questions or problems at the end of each cycle and these ideas were written down on cards. These ideas could be used as input for subsequent lesson study.

The leadership of both schools thus provided support; the way in which they did that, however, appeared to differ. At School B, support was mainly provided by the principal and was focused on facilitating. At School E, support was mainly provided by the lesson study coordinator and teachers, and was more strongly focused on inspiring and helping. Leadership motivated staff members for lesson study, for example, by ‘talking about the benefits of lesson study and formative assessment’ (School B) and mentioning the added value for the school and ‘stressing the importance of each staff member’s participation’ (School E). All leadership practices for the schools are summarised in Table 3.

Table 3. Analysis of leadership practices at schools B and E.

	School B	School E
Organising and (re-)designing the organisation
Crafting coherence	Connected lesson study to current affairs within the school (i.e. formative assessment and differentiation)	-
Resourcing and facilitation	Cleared schedules for lesson study meetings Cleared schedules for sharing lesson study results Cleared schedules for teachers to participate in lesson study PD programme Appointed lesson study coordinator	Cleared schedules for lesson study meetings Cleared schedules for sharing lesson study results Cleared schedules for and financed teachers to participate in lesson study professional development programme At first, teachers compensated with hours for their participation in lesson study, now mandatory, everyone works on it Facilitated lesson study coordinator
Vision and goals	Deliberately chose teachers of core subjects to participate in the lesson study PD programme Lesson study not the goal; used as tool to achieve other goals in the schools (i.e. formative assessment and differentiation) Lesson study part of school board’s plan	Involved different schools in lesson study Lesson study used as tool to let staff members talk about education with each other Lesson study part of the school plan
Managing the teaching and learning programme
Planning	Worked with Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle Lesson study meetings placed in yearly calendar Planned lesson study during shortened time schedule (40- instead of 50-minute lessons)	Lesson study meetings placed in yearly calendar
Monitoring	Worked with PDCA cycle Lesson study used as a tool for observing lessons and identifying areas that could be improved	Performance review between teacher and principals once every two years Lesson study topic of conversation during the annual meetings between department and principals and during teachers’ annual performance review
Evaluating	Worked with PDCA cycle Lesson study not evaluated	Assessment interview between teacher and principals once every four years Lesson study not evaluated
Understanding and developing people
Being available	Opened office doors when possible Often present in teacher room Offered sympathetic ear	Opened office doors when possible Often present in teacher room Offered sympathetic ear
Being knowledgeable	Knew lesson study’s content and procedures Answered questions about lesson study	Knew lesson study’s content and procedures Answered questions about lesson study
Connecting	Connected to university/experts (i.e. invited speakers, asked for literature to use in lesson study’s second core component)	-
Modelling	Participation in lesson study by staff members from all organisational layers	Involvement in lesson study by staff members from all organisational layers
Providing support	Meetings organised by lesson study facilitators to discuss their groups with each other Organised meetings to refresh teachers’ knowledge about lesson study or to introduce teachers to lesson study Answered questions about lesson study Thought along with problems teachers face (‘sparring partner’)	Provided inspiration for lesson study Provided lesson study booklets Answered questions, made comments, and developed observation forms related to lesson study Thought along with problems teachers faced (‘sparring partner’)
Motivating	Talked about the results to motivate people to keep working with lesson study	Talked about the results/was enthusiastic to motivate people to keep working with lesson study

Discussion

This study focused on leadership and sustained lesson study. We used a case study design to explore intensively and describe sustained lesson study and leadership in two schools that sustained lesson study, in order to gain in-depth understanding of the enactment of both phenomena. We found that both schools embedded lesson study in the school as an organisational routine and that various leadership practices were enacted. Our findings suggest two themes: an interplay of leadership practices for sustained lesson study, and leadership tailored to the school’s context. We discuss these themes below.

An interplay of leadership practices for sustained lesson study

Several leadership practices were observed at both schools that sustained lesson study. These practices were related to all three core functions of leadership. Regarding leadership’s first core function, organising and (re-)designing the organisation, resourcing and facilitation was observed in two forms. First, the leadership put effort into scheduling. Lack of scheduling is an often-found aspect that can inhibit the continuation of lesson study (Saito 2012; Wolthuis et al. 2021). In these schools, leadership put lesson study on the school’s annual calendar one year beforehand, and adjusted the schedules of staff members so that they could participate in lesson study and share lesson study’s results. Embedding the professional development approach at hand in human resource management, as was done at those schools, is important for continuing to work with it (De Jong et al. 2021). The teachers were thus not as likely to be hindered by a lack of structural resources such as time or space, which are important for continuing the work of a professional development approach (Stoll et al. 2006), especially since lesson study is a time-consuming activity (e.g. Lim et al. 2011). Second, the leadership at both schools appointed a lesson study coordinator: the coordinator organised, communicated about, and supported staff members. These are all practices that are important for lesson study (e.g. Lim et al. 2011; Perry and Lewis 2009). Assigning these practices to a staff member apparently helped by making someone professionally responsible for the execution of lesson study. Third, the leadership at both schools had a clear vision and goals for lesson study and added this to school policy plans. Although the vision at both schools differed, it helped set the direction for working with lesson study, as well as helping with setting priorities, which has also been found to be beneficial for sustainability in previous studies (e.g. Andreou et al. 2015; Larsen and Samdal 2008).

Related to leadership’s second core function, managing the teaching and learning programme, leadership planned lesson study, for example, by placing the meetings in the annual calendar and therewith established policy for regular meetings. Planning, in combination with the scheduling discussed above, could contribute to lesson study’s continuation. Additionally, the leadership at both schools monitored lesson study or monitored the teaching and learning programme while considering lesson study – for example, by using lesson observations. This helped make lesson study part of the school organisation and indicated that leadership was engaged with and valued lesson study (Bambara et al. 2012).

Leadership practices related to leadership’s third core function, understanding people and supporting their development, were observed at both schools as well. Support was provided by leadership at both schools, but the manner in which this was carried out differed. Our analysis suggested that both types of support, at the one school more facilitative and at the other more helpful and inspirational, helped enhance staff members’ motivation and enthusiasm. Additionally, the leadership was available and knowledgeable about lesson study: they were often available in the staff room, knew lesson study’s content and procedures, and could answer questions about lesson study right away. This helped support the values of lesson study (Groves et al. 2016). Leadership’s motivating, which was done by talking about lesson study’s results and being enthusiastic about them, might have helped convince others of lesson study’s importance and value. Their modelling, by being involved and participating in lesson study, showed the importance and value of lesson study to the school (Larsen and Samdal 2008). In short, our findings indicate that the interplay of these leadership practices, which resemble each of the core functions of leadership, was carried out by the leaders in these two schools that sustained lesson study.

Leadership tailored to the school’s context

In addition to the leadership practices that were undertaken by the leadership at both schools, our analysis also identified leadership practices that were enacted at only one of the schools. These were crafting coherence and connecting. Moreover, differences in the enactment of leadership practices were identified, as seen in the differences in the support that was provided, for example. These differences in school leadership might partly be explained by the differences in school context, or, more specifically, the policy reasons for working with lesson study and the school size.

The policy reasons for working with lesson study are important for implementing and continuing working with it (Akiba 2016). School B started working with lesson study because of the urgency to improve the school’s quality, and a top-down approach was used to implement lesson study. At School E, lesson study was implemented because of the added value experienced from lesson study (i.e. stimulation of professional dialogue among teachers), so they implemented lesson study in an interplay with the teachers. The sense of policy urgency might also be the reason why School B’s leadership focused strongly on crafting coherence between lesson study and the school’s goals, and making connections with the university, while School E’s leadership did not do this explicitly.

The differences in leadership enactment may also partly be explained by the school size. School B was considered small, especially compared to School E. At schools that are smaller, staff members are physically closer to each other, resulting in more opportunities for unplanned encounters (Shirrell, Hopkins, and Spillane 2019). These unplanned encounters could, perhaps, provide more inspiring and helpful support. In turn, if that type of support therefore does not have to be given by the leadership itself, they may be able to focus on other types of support. The leadership then tailored their support to the school’s context.

Previous studies have suggested that the organisational context is important for teachers’ pedagogical practices (Gemmink et al. 2021), explaining the effectiveness of professional development (Coburn, Touré, and Yamashita 2009; Kennedy 2010; Wolthuis et al. 2021), and sustainability (e.g. Askell-Williams and Koh 2020; Bellei et al. 2020; McNaughton 2021). This study suggests that the school’s context might also be vital for leading sustained professional development. Namely, the assumption that follows from this is that leadership can be tailored to the school’s context to achieve sustained lesson study. Although leadership practices that are carried out can be determined, to echo Bryk (2015), there is no one single success formula for leadership that sustains lesson study – it depends on the school’s context. Or, as Bryk (2015, 25), stated: ‘Improving schools entails coherent, orchestrated action (…), there is no one silver bullet’.

Practical implications

For leadership in schools that aim for sustained lesson study, it seems important to schedule lesson study, to be available, and to have knowledge about lesson study. Additionally, appointing a staff member as lesson study coordinator, who can serve as primary contact for lesson study within the school and organise and communicate about it, might be important too. This may help staff members in different ways, as they know where to go for organisational, collaborative or content-related challenges or questions. Whether and how these are carried out seem to be related to the school’s context. For example, the way leadership provides support might differ based on the policy reasons for working with lesson study.

Limitations and future research

We acknowledge several limitations of our study. First, our research focused on the Dutch context. In this context, a school’s staff members have the freedom to decide what and how they want to teach, and to implement curriculum innovations (OECD 2008, 2010), which might affect their involvement in lesson study. Studies in other contexts in which teachers and schools do not have this kind of autonomy (see, for instance, Cohen, Spillane, and Peurach 2018) are necessary to develop a more comprehensive understanding of essential leadership practices and contextual characteristics that support sustained lesson study. Additionally, sustainability is a process rather than a state (Van den Boom-Muilenburg 2021; McNaughton 2021). Another limitation, therefore, is that although schools were observed and leaders were interviewed at another point in time, the focus was solely on schools that were already further along in the sustainability process. A longitudinal study into leaders’ practices related to different stages of the process of sustaining lesson study could yield more insights into leadership practices necessary for each stage.

Conclusion

The small-scale exploratory qualitative design provided us with in-depth insights into leaders’ practices in schools that sustained lesson study, though it focused on only two schools. Our findings and any implications drawn should therefore be regarded with appropriate caution, although it is noteworthy that several other studies have come to similar conclusions (e.g. Askell-Williams and Koh 2020; Lim et al. 2011; Perry and Lewis 2009; Wolthuis et al. 2021). Future studies could repeat a similar study in another context to further validate our findings (local proof route; see Lewis, Perry, and Murata 2006). Additionally, future studies could contrast our findings with leadership practices at schools that have not yet sustained lesson study to gain insight into hindering leadership practices or mismatches between leadership and context – in that way, the argument made could be strengthened. All in all, our analysis indicated that an interplay of practices was carried out by leaders in the schools that sustained lesson study. Whether and how these leadership practices were carried out also seemed to depend on the schools’ context. As such, it is important to examine the school and its leadership in context when considering sustainability. This could lead to more successful future processes for sustaining professional development approaches (Harris 2020) such as lesson study.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the schools that participated in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO) under Grant 2019/NRO/00767065.

Notes

1. In the Netherlands, school boards govern one to multiple schools. They are the decision-making bodies and are responsible for school quality assurance.