How did teachers learn in boundary-crossing lesson study in a Chinese secondary school?

ABSTRACT

Most of current Chinese teachers’ in-service learning takes place in two modes: listening to experts’ lectures, and sharing experiences among peers. How a boundary-crossing learning context can be created so as to inspire teachers’ deep reflection on their mindsets and change their routine behaviour remains a challenge. This paper explores how the teachers in a Chinese secondary school learned in a boundary-crossing lesson study with the support of outside scholars. Driven by the contradictions of value conflict between education for exams and education for student development, the teachers volunteered to participate in the project. Taking student group learning as the boundary object, the teachers retooled relevant theories and methods, improved teaching and learning, and generated new practical knowledge. The study identified four mechanisms that substantiated the teachers’ boundary-crossing learning: negotiation of meaning, relationship construction, perspective transformation, and hybridization of practice. The findings of this paper will benefit teachers, teacher researchers and educators as well as policy makers by providing experiences of an alternative approach for teacher learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Lesson study
• boundary-crossing lesson study
• boundary-crossing learning
• student group learning
• teacher practical knowledge

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the case school for inviting us to join the project, to the teachers who provided rich data and inspiration for the research, to Fuwei Wang and Ping Xie for their assistance in the project, and to Yanping Fang, Lynn Paine and the reviewers for the improvement of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This paper was supported by the research project entitled “Teacher boundary-crossing learning mechanisms” [No. JCJYYJ201901], sponsored by Yuyue Education Development Fund, Center for Research on Basic Education in Peking University, China.

Notes on contributors

Xiangming Chen

Xiangming Chen is a professor in Graduate School of Education, Peking University. She is also serving as distinguished researcher of Shanghai Municipal Institute for Lifelong Education, East China Normal University. She got her Ph. D from Harvard University. Her research interests include teacher education, curriculum studies and research methodology. She is the author of many books and articles on qualitative research and teacher education.

Chao An

Chao An is assistant researcher in China Institute of Education & Social Development,Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China. She got her Master degree from Peking University and her Ph. D from Beijing Normal University. Her research interests include sociology of education, teacher education and family education.