Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) through lesson and learning studies in Asia: moving beyond steps to support transformation of practices

Lesson study in Asia

Lesson study originated in China and Japan and has come to be known as a range of effective workplace-embedded instructional improvement and professional learning practices (Huang, Fang, & Chen, 2017; Lewis, Perry, & Murata, 2006). The process begins with educators studying a persistent problem in practice and proposing solutions, designing a research lesson to test these ideas, and collectively teaching, observing the lesson to collect data on teaching and student learning experience. They then keep improving the lesson design based on evidenceof learning from observations so that the improvements can speak to larger visions of education and reform (Huang et al., 2017; Lewis et al., 2006). Even though lesson study sessions are generally teacher-driven, external partners, such as district specialists and university faculty members, are often invited to provide different perspectives and offer research and theoretical support (Fang, 2017; Lewis et al., 2006). In many ways, these activities are institutionalized instructional improvement practices (Paine & Fang, 2006) and have existed as certain forms of long-term organic research-practice partnerships.

With the global spread of lesson study over the past two decades, there has been interest and funding from governments, universities and other agencies to bring university researchers and/or curriculum specialists to work with school teachers to do lesson study, often in response to the demand of educational reforms (Chen & An, Fang, Ko, Ronda & Daniped, Wood & Andrew in this issue). Research from such lesson study and learning study initiatives has proliferated in recent years. Recent scholarship coming from this work speaks to a range of topics, including the benefits and challenges of lesson study for teacher learning in support of student learning, as well as ways, processes and supporting conditions of that learning (Xu & Pedder, 2014). Roles of external collaborators, mainly in supporting the research lesson improvement by acting as facilitators and more knowledgeable others, are also considered (Takahashi, 2014; Shuilleabhain & Seery, 2018). However, the partnerships in which lesson study practices are situated and enacted have rarely been systematically studied nor has how partners learn from one another to promote lesson study partnerships (Xu & Pedder, 2014). This is an important gap to fill. For lesson study researchers and practitioners worldwide, sustaining lesson study practices remains a major challenge (Fang & Wang, 2021). Research on how to build research-practice partnerships in ways that can sustain lesson study is thus timely.

As noted earlier, lesson study originated in Asia, with a variety of models practiced in both China and Japan (Huang et al., 2017; Lewis et al., 2006). As funded initiatives have built research-practice partnerships (RPPs) between universities and schools globally, four of the major models of lesson study have been practiced in Asia. The region is thus a rich site to study RPPs in lesson study. This volume offers a pioneering set of studies on lesson study-focused research-practice partnerships. The eight case studies featured here reflect the four major lesson study models.

The first model, which is also the most common one globally, is Japanese Lesson Study, introduced first to the English-speaking world by Catherine Lewis and Tsuchida (1998) and Lewis (2002) and then spread to other countries in Asia around mid-2000. Although the cases here in this volume adopted this common Japanese lesson study model, they have been adapted to the local contexts, as mentioned later: when referring to RPP in Singapore, Fang’s study focused on this lesson study model with elements of Chinese lesson study, while Jiang, Choy, & Lee’s study is an adapted current local model, and when referring to RPP in the Philippines, Ronda & Danipog’s study is also a unique local model adapted from Japanese lesson study.

Lesson Study for Learning Community (LSLC), a second model, is an approach developed by Manabu Sato. Also widely practiced in Japanese schools, it particularly aims to address issues of low performing schools. Around the mid-2000s, Japanese scholars, based in and outside of Japan, started collaborating with universities and schools in several Southeast Asian countries to introduce this form. Atsushi & Saito (this volume) explore an RPP in Vietnam, while other examples of LSLC cases can be found, for example, in Indonesia (Saito, Imansyah, Kubok, & Hendayana, 2007; Suratno, 2012).

The third model involves university academic programmes in Japan designed with a practice focus on lesson study in local schools. This model, which here we call University Degree Programmes, is represented in this volume by Wang, Yurita, & Kimura, who study the Fukui University Professional Graduate Programme's practice, founded in 2008.

Finally, the fourth major model is Learning Study, a variant form of Japanese and Chinese lesson study, guided by Ference Marton’s variation theory, which has been built and practiced in Hong Kong since early 2000 (see Ko, this volume). It has spread to other Asian countries, such as Brunei (Wood & Andrew in this volume), where it has been practiced in the school system since 2006.

Besides the eight country/region empirical cases mentioned above, included in this volume are two review studies, one on lesson study RPPs in Asia (Wei & Huang) and the other on RPPs in three traditions of teacher research – action research, narrative inquiry and teacher inquiry (Pereira & Fang), as well as one final commentary paper (Choy), which examines the learning from RPPs by both researchers and practitioners through the lens of learning from experience. Together, these case studies, reviews and commentary encourage a fresh perspective on lesson study, focusing on the nature, conditions and contexts of lesson study as inquiry and improvement that combines research and practice.

Conceptualizing lesson study as RPPs

As a community, we have come to know a lot about what lesson study can make possible and about a wide range of lesson study experience and challenges. What is less known is how lesson study can be sustained. In particular, we need to know more about the relationship between school folk and others (university partners, district curriculum specialists, etc.) in building and sustaining lesson study. More specifically, what is the role of partnership in lesson study, and how can we conceptualize this relationship in ways that support improvement of learning (for children, for teachers, and for others)?

This volume, with 11 papers written by university faculty members or independent scholars, draws on the authors’ individual or collective reflections on their experience working with schools and leading lesson study for school improvement. The authors have been designers and facilitators of lesson study for almost two decades. They are aware that sustaining lesson study in RPPs has remained a challenge.

In fact, sustaining research-practice partnerships in education in general has always been challenging. In a systematic study of effective RPPs in education in the U.S. in the past decade, Farrell et al. (2022) suggest that we know very little about “when and under what conditions RPPs can navigate [the] challenges and make progress on their goals of long-term outcomes” (Farrell et al., 2022, p. 2). Their most recent analysis of the state of the field in RPP work provides a useful perspective from which to step back and examine lesson study more systematically. Focusing on the cases in this special issue gives us the opportunity to focus on the complexities of lesson study as research practice partnership. While we recognize that Farrell , Coburn, & Daniel (2022) use a different notion of research than is found in lesson study, we nevertheless find it helpful to consider lesson study research-practice-partnerships and take their definition of an RPP as “long-term partnerships aim at educational improvement or equitable transformation through engagement with research …” (Farrell et al., 2022, p. iv).

In their extensive study of RPPs, Farrell et al. find that highly effective RPPs share five principles, many of which we also find quite visible in effective lesson study RPP work. An effective RPP demonstrates (1) shared commitment to jointly frame problems of practice and shape solutions; (2) intentionally organized focus on persistent problems of practice to improving educational outcome by enhancing the nature of interactions between partners to facilitate collaboration; (3) the central role of research in systematically engaging all partners (not just researchers) in different phases of research to address the problems of practice identified; (4) resourceful strategies (such as roles, rules, routines and protocols) to leverage diverse expertise and perspectives of the partners to fulfil the goals of partnerships; and (5) decentralized power relations so that perspectives from all sides and roles are listened to in order to reconcile competing priorities and enhance joint ownership of the problems and solutions. Most importantly, RPPs use research to support decision-making in policy and practice through its interactive processes (Farrell et al., 2022).

RPP frameworks recognize the centrality of joint work in research. RPP scholars contrast their work “with images of partnership work as facilitating the translation of research into practice” (Penuel, Allen, Coburn, & Farrell, 2015, p. 182). Certainly, lesson study similarly is not about applying or translating research to practice. Instead, its power and part of the reason behind its great growth globally has been its ability to generate new knowledge through practice. As designers and facilitators of lesson study work, we conceptualize learning in RPP settings as “learning at the boundaries” (Farrell, Penuel, & Allen, 2022, p. 2). The concepts of boundary object, boundary actions and boundary crossing (Akkerman & Bakker, 2011) thus are promising ways into examining what is going on, and what is needed, in lesson study collaboration. Most of the papers in this volume draw on cultural-historic and social culture theories of learning and use such concepts to frame their studies. Here, boundaries refer to differences (cultural, professional and organizational) that can be capitalized on to enable mutual learning within and across partners. To study this learning, Farrell et al.’s (2022) conceptual framework captures the internal structure at work behind boundary learning in an RPP; we see the value of applying this to examining learning in a lesson study RPP.

The four-part framework (Farrell et al., 2022) consists of the partner organizations, the boundary infrastructure, the outcome of intermediary learning and change within an organization, and the long-term outcome of educational improvement and transformation. Here learning refers to partners working together to build on their cultural and professional differences, share, mediate and transform ideas to foster the intended intermediary and long-term outcome (p. 2). How much an RPP is able to respond to and benefit from the differences for learning depends on the availability and design of the boundary infrastructure and pre-existing conditions internal to the partner organizations, such as “prior knowledge, communication pathways, strategic knowledge leadership (SLK) practice and resource mobilization” (Farrell et al., 2022, pp. 3–5).

The idea of boundary infrastructure subsumes the core concepts of boundary spanning (brokering), boundary practices and boundary objects (Farrell et al., 2022, pp. 2–3). Boundary infrastructure forms a higher-order unifying concept capable of articulating the central mechanism supporting learning in an RPP. Viewed from this concept, we are able to see lesson study as the infrastructure that supports learning at the boundary in an RPP, rather than as the RPP itself. In addition, with this framework we are also able to see our double role as university academic partners. On the one hand, we act as boundary spanners (brokers), facilitators and knowledgeable others in our lesson study work, to connect, improve and facilitate communication within and across partners. On the other hand, belonging to tertiary institutions, we engage in our strategic leadership knowledge practice (SLK) (pp. 4–5) to design and research the boundary infrastructures of lesson study practices.

Farrell’s et al.’s (2022) principles for research-practice-partnerships highlight three areas of particular importance which are under-examined in lesson study scholarship: the role of research and inquiry and how it enhances learning; resourceful tools, strategies and structures to support learning through RPP; and roles and relationships that allow shifts in power to support collaborative learning. The essays in this volume provide rich cases for considering these three themes.

Theme 1: the role of research in the boundary infrastructure of lesson study in RPPs

What does it mean for lesson study to act as the infrastructure that supports learning at the boundary in an RPP? Research and inquiry are central, particularly if partnerships are to make possible enhanced learning. This is very evident in several of the articles in this volume.

Recall that lesson study has “research lesson” as the core. How does a university-school partnership deepen research in ways that it (research) can improve teaching and learning? Studies here, particularly those by Chen & An and Ronda & Danipog, suggest that research frameworks and activites that support the research lesson can have consequences extending beyond improving the lesson, by deepening knowledge and shifting identities. Both articles highlight the use of research and principled frameworks in strengthening boundary infrastructures. Both point to ways research activities can develop teacher and collaborating partner capacity for boundary-crossing learning and identity making.

University-school collaborations, when research is emphasized, can create possibilities for boundary crossing that produce changes for both teachers and university faculty. This is powerfully illustrated in the case analysed by Chen and An, which they describe as a “boundary-crossing lesson study” in a Chinese secondary school. Drawing on Cerbin’s (2011), eight-step lesson study model (instead of the common four step study-plan-do-reflect model) to make prominent the steps of designing research and analysing data, the intervention focused on teacher capacity building through an array of research activities. In addition to regular lesson study procedures, the entire team transcribed the videos verbatim, analysed their observation notes, wrote reflection memos, interviewed case students 3 times, and surveyed all students before and after the intervention. The teacher groups also interviewed each other to understand their own learning within each group. The intensive and systematic research activities, over an eight-month period, supported learning for students, teachers and the university partners. The authors – themselves university-based participants in the study – reflect on the transformation that accompanies the boundary crossing. Teachers and researchers both experienced transformation in how they perceived student ability to learn.

Making research prominent means deliberate planning that can guide and give voice to inquiry. Such planning of processes facilitates boundary crossing for teacher learning and capacity building. In Ronda & Danipog’s case study, the importance of a principled research framework stands out. “Examining teacher-academic collaboration in lesson study for its potential in shaping teacher research identity” analyzes a 3-year research project and its long-term impact on teacher identity. The authors, from the National Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Development (NISMED) in the Philippines, examine teachers from one school engaged in knowledge building and knowledge sharing in a 3-year Collaborative Lesson Research Development (CLRD) research project. During and since after the project most of the school’s participating mathematics teachers have presented at the Institute’s annual lesson study research conferences. The nature and extent of their participation constitutes a marked shift, in the context of teachers in the Philippines, in how teachers enact their professional identities as lesson study teacher researchers constructing and performing knowledge.

Teachers developed a teacher researcher identity (TRI) through carefully staged, scaffolded engagement in mathematics problem-solving inquiry throughout the lesson study: prior to lesson study, problematizing instruction based on evidence from practice, through seminars as well as collecting and designing rich tasks; using the research-informed, principled framework to guide lesson study; sharing lesson studies through annual lesson study conferences for teachers to experience how they documented and analysed their own lesson study video, tasks and student solution processes. When teachers repeatedly crossed the boundaries between research and practice , they made the boundaries of “research” and “practice” permeable and the new practice of research routinized. To Ronda and Danipog, the principles underpinning the research lesson and the platform of continued and guided formal annual sharing before and after the research project provide the teachers with a framework and language to analyse and talk about the lesson and their own learning. They suggest it is using these principles in designing the research lessons, not the research lessons themselves, that engaged teachers in research activities and developed their teacher researcher identity.

Both Chen & An and Ronda & Danipog examine learning at the boundaries of university research and school practices, using the concepts of boundary objects and boundary crossing. Through the roles that the university researchers played, they built strong boundary infrastructure to support boundary crossing mechanisms. Research helps create boundary crossing and acts as boundary object. In fact, strategically embedded principled research designs, frameworks and activities acted as a boundary object. The research function inherent in conventional lesson study was enhanced and new knowledge and identities created. Their RPPs not only were able to target subject matter teaching in principled ways but also over time develop teacher researcher identity.

While much lesson study scholarship has focused on transformations of teachers, shifts in understandings hinge on and affect both parties in a partnership. Unpacking what “partnership” entails, as well as how “research” is conceptualized is needed. In this special issue, Fang, like Chen and An, documents how academic/”expert”-school collaboration, when developed sensitively over time, has the potential to support “expansive learning” (Engestrom, 2000). In her analysis of an intervention in a Singapore primary school involving novice teachers, a senior teacher, curriculum specialist, and academics, she describes deliberative actions involving boundary crossing learning moments. Participants being able to notice dissonance between expectations and results throughout the research lesson cycles was significant in supporting joint learning. In addition, the nature of the partnership allowed differences in expertise and perspectives to meet and mesh into productive solutions. The result was an enhanced sense of professional identity for both the novice teachers and the curriculum specialist. Cyclical improvement and anticipatory reasoning inherent in typical lesson study mechanism are important but, argues Fang, they only start functioning when the curriculum potentials are unlocked (Deng, 2021) and the planning discourse becomes curriculum deliberation. Curriculum deliberation as inquiry and a kind of knowledge practice may be a form of research activity that has not been sufficiently considered in either the RPP or lesson study literature.

Therefore, rethinking what constitutes research in lesson study RPPs is needed. In this volume, Jiang, Choy and Lee’s analysis of “Boundary actions for collaborative learning: A practical perspective of adapting lesson study in a Singapore primary school” recommends awareness of the practical realities of partnerships involving schools. They argue for the value of hybrid forms for a practical inquiry stance in doing lesson study rather than following rigidly commonly scripted ways. Keeping “research” and “partnership” both central in lesson study RPP enhances learning possibilities, but requires resourcefulness and commitment, features that Farrell et al. (2022) highlight as key principles. Time, leadership and more can be constraints that require adaptation or adaptability while still maintaining inquiry-oriented relationships across the two different cultures of schools and universities.

Jiang et al. case illustrates the role of research – collection of evidence, analysis, deliberation and reflection to generate new insights – as boundary work. Drawing on Akkerman and Bakker (2011), they identify four boundary crossing learning mechanisms, each of which entails aspects of research: identification, coordination, reflection and transformation. For them, explicating and understanding the boundaries between partner worlds of school and university is necessary for productive joint learning. It requires negotiated construction of meaning and not simply inclusion of all perspectives. For example, the teacher educators used lesson study as a coordination of mutual learning by creating opportunities for both partners to deliberate alternative teaching approaches and justify their decisions based on evidence of student learning and lack of learning. Through reflection, they started rethinking the role of lesson study in helping teachers figure out how they work collectively to enact MOE expected innovations. The university-based partners gained skill in perspective taking, learning to appreciate the teachers’ need for concreteness and relevance in lesson study work.

Theme 2: resourceful tools, strategies and structures to support learning through RPPs

Lesson study advocates have already contributed important work in developing tools to help teachers engage in productive lesson study (e.g., Lewis, 2002; https://lessonresearch.net/; Dudley, 2014; https://lessonstudy.co.uk/about-us-pete-dudley/; Murata & Lee, 2021). These have become crucial guidance for lesson study practitioners. Farrell et al. (2022) argue that the demanding work of research-practice partnerships requires resourceful structures and strategies. Research in this volume and elsewhere provides ample evidences of this fact.

Participants in RPP lesson studies by definition are bridging different communities of practice. How do they negotiate the different norms, expectations, and languages that they bring to their shared goal of improvement of student and professional learning? This kind of boundary crossing benefits from tools that create openings for noticing, offer new perspectives for understanding and new scripts for communicating, and help develop shared frameworks for common action. As Farrell et al. (2022) suggest for other RPP, and as the examples in this volume document, these tools and strategies can’t be uniform, but instead need to be resourcefully adapted to the particular contexts and goals.

Tools can serve as boundary objects that advance the development of shared learning. As Akkerman and Bakker (2011) argue, boundary crossing can be facilitated by explicit identification of differences. (See Jiang et al. for further use of this idea in one lesson study case analysis.) New tools may need to be constructed to allow participants to step outside their habitual practice, what Atsushi and Saito (this volume) call their dispositif (Esposito, 2012). Developing such tools requires awareness of boundaries, history and micropolitics and school culture.

As an example, Atsushi and Saito examine Vietnamese lesson study meetings in relation to a tradition of workplace arrangements that position teachers’ subjectivity in performative and evaluative ways. This includes a tendency for teachers to criticize each other through evaluative judgement of colleagues’ lessons based on prescribed teaching guides. In their LSLC (lesson study for learning community)-based meetings that were part of their longstanding RPP project, the authors introduced a new Japanese dispositif, one that encourages teachers’ observing each other’s lessons, documenting students’ learning in photos and notetaking, equally sharing observed student learning. Through this different set of protocols, tools and artefacts, the combative and judgemental evaluation of the school leader and colleagues’ teaching shifted to narrative sharing that focused on students’ learning, often expressed with emotions. This case illustrates how structures, protocols and tools can be created to support new stances and relationships in teaching and teacher learning. The articles here by Chen and An, Fang, Ronda and Danipog each provide their own illustration of this point. It is important to note that each lesson study RPP developed its own structures, strategies and processes to support the boundary crossing learning. In addition, Atsushi and Saito’s case stands as a valuable reminder that in RPP, it is necessary not only to understand boundaries between partner communities of practice but to recognize the arrangements that are part of the school and teacher culture, tacitly held but daily performed.

Tools and strategies inevitably direct participants’ energies. That is, the design of the strategies or tools orient the work and eventually the learning. Wang, Yurita, and Kimura’s study (this volume) of a Japanese graduate degree programme oriented towards school-based professional learning provides evidence of how the programme’s orientation towards reflective practice engenders teachers, at different stages of their careers, to develop reflective depth and greater agency as teachers and leaders. The Fukui University Professional Graduate Programme's practice schools become a boundary zone for the university support team of faculty members with diverse expertise in research and school teaching to support the graduate students who are graduate interns, inservice experienced teachers and middle leaders working at the schools. Their collaborative action research projects through lesson study are geared to help schools address practical problems or meet reform demands. Wang and colleagues demonstrate how the structure of weekly seminars, regular reflective writing and other protocols of the RPP powerfully influence teachers at different points of their careers. The weekly university-based research seminar helped to deepen the graduate students’ field reflection by sharing with their peers and university faculty members their longitudinal reflection practice reports to get feedback. These reports become another boundary object that builds coherence of the PGP curriculum and the interactive mutual peer learning. According to Wang et al., “evidence indicates that the multi-layered reflective lesson study meetings – set both within their schools and at the university with other peers – provided the motives for facilitating and internalising alternative perceptions and translating these into changes regarding their habitual modes of teaching” (p.130).

While protocols and activities serve as tools that can reinforce RPP goals for education transformation, shared theory can also offer supports for developing common commitments, language, and focus. Within lesson study RPP, there is much evidence of the ways that theory can serve as boundary object to connect, give coherence and add meanings to the work of participants. One strong example of theory as boundary object comes from the experience of Learning Study in different contexts.

Learning study draws on Japanese lesson study’s process protocols, employs Chinese lesson study’s three iterations in teaching a research lesson, and uses variation theory (Marton & Booth, 1997) to guide the intensive planning and refining of a research lesson. It also draws elements from action research, including pre- and post-tests of student understanding to inform planning and refining, and post-lesson study interviews with students to assess student learning. It has been sustained for 20 years in Hong Kong, where it has been implemented by 400 schools and reached over one-third of the school population, and for 16 years in Brunei, where it is widely implemented in the school system. Learning Study in both Hong Kong and Brunei serves to coordinate university-school partnerships to help teachers better respond to new reform initiatives, such as self-directed learning and e-learning in Hong Kong and 21st century competence-based national curriculum reform and Teacher Performance Appraisal for teacher core competencies in Brunei.

Two articles in this issue (Ko, and Wood and Andrew) provide examples of how theory as boundary object enables (and puts demands on) partnership. Ko’s study in Hong Kong offers a case study of English Language teachers employing Learning Study while trying to respond to local education reform initiatives in their design of instruction. In contrast, Wood and Andrew examine a Learning Study case involving O Level Economics instruction of the concept of price. While these topics are very different, both cases speak to the ways that variation theory grounds the RPP work.

In both cases, RPP work began with building mutual trust between partners and then systematically introducing Learning Study, both its structures and theory. In each case, the learning study work started with considering the diverse needs of the students through administering and analysing the carefully designed pre-tests and interviews with the students to identify the prior knowledge of the students to inform the planning of the research lessons. Variation theory was explicitly used to guide the planning by focusing on the object of learning (OL) – how to create patterns of variations (through i.e., generalization, contrast and fusion) to enable the students to discern critical features of the object of learning.

In both case studies, variation theory acted as a boundary object to not only link each stage of learning study but also to serve as the communicative connection between the university consultants or facilitators and school teachers. The success in these two RPPs flowed in part from the presence of an agreed on, shared conceptualization of the theory that drove the work. That shared vision, so vital to RPP work, allowed the teachers to shift their perspective from resistant to welcoming when they experienced visible improvement in student learning outcome and to develop their own pedagogical content knowledge. The teacher educators and researchers also developed their own knowledge and expertise in building mutual relationships with practitioners through open communication. The theory they used helped them take on partner roles more effectively, as Wood and Sithamparam (2021) shared from their work facilitating learning study:

Knowing when and when not to intervene in the group’s decisions is critical. Juxtaposing teachers contributions to the discussion, often connecting the conversation to something that was said earlier (historicity), is critical. Introducing an idea that could move the group on when it becomes stuck is critical. Knowing when to remain silent is critical. And it is critical to ensure that the teacher group focuses on the questions: what does it mean to understand this OL, what are the critical aspects for the students and, once discovered, how can we bring those aspects to the awareness of the students? (p.115)

Theory, seen as tool or support, plays an important role in shaping how actors engage across research and practice in these collaborations. Like any tool, there are affordances and constraints. The cases included here suggest that theory as boundary object can focus energies. Given the demanding nature of school practice and the heightened challenges of university-school collaboration in the midst of accountability pressures and external reform initiatives, it is worthwhile to explore further how particular theories, processes, and tools can enhance effective and sustainable lesson study collaborations.

Theme 3: roles, relationships and shifting power in RPPs

At the heart of lesson study, regardless of the model used, is the value given to learning in community. Inevitably, relationships must be considered. Scholarship on lesson study has indeed explored the various roles that support powerful learning in lesson study. Similarly, the field of lesson study research has long prized the ways teacher-generated knowledge through lesson study challenges some assumptions about where knowledge in and of teaching resides (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1990; Dudley, 2013; Elliott, 2012; Hiebert, Morris, Berk, & Jansen, 2007; Lewis et al., 2006). As we bring together this line of discussion with the growing literature about research-practice partnerships, exploring how collaborations between those in schools and those in higher education institutions and other organizations, the question of power relations becomes more salient.

The essays in this volume illustrate a wide range of ways “outsiders” join with teachers to support collaborative learning. We see in Chen & An, for example, how the university researchers played boundary spanning roles, including negotiating meaning with the partner school for teacher voluntary participation and building mutual trusting relationship with the participating teachers. Apart from the ways academics may play spanning and bridging roles, however, it is vital to consider the “two worlds of practice” (Jiang et al., p. 58) that partners in university-school collaborations inhabit. These two worlds are not typically seen as equal in status. And while those with higher degrees or higher social position may be viewed by some as having more power, it is clear that members of each community may lack understanding of the expertise of the other, as well as the real demands of the institutions they occupy.

Penuel et al. in 2015 argued that:

Partnerships between researchers and practitioners require participants to navigate multiple cultural, professional, and organizational differences. Some of these differences are linked to differences between the way researchers and practitioners tend to frame and deliberate about problems and design solutions to problems of practice with colleagues … .Other differences associate with the expected pace of work … When people from different cultural and institutional domains collaborate, these differences become salient, and they can become obstacles that close down collaboration, or boundaries to be understood and navigated” (p. 188)

It is thus not surprising that Farrell et al. (2022) more recently identify as a key principle of RPP the need to “shift power relations in research endeavors to ensure that all participants have a say” (p. iv).

Such concerns are evident in RPP lesson study, including cases discussed in this volume. Jiang et al., for example, describe “a continuous process of boundary-making and boundary-crossing by teacher educators and school participants, which could be facilitated by attending to the ‘practicals’ deemed important by teachers” (p. 59) They believe that a practical stance would make lesson study serve its real purpose by taking consideration of and working with the practical situations of teachers’ work. This stance echoes the fifth principleof effective RPP synthesized by Farrellet al. (2021): a stance taken by the teacher educators to decentralize power relations and take perspectives from all sides to reconcile competing priorities and enhance joint ownership of the problems and solutions. RPP lesson study requires negotiated roles, as well as shifting identities. These can lead to negotiated learning of the kind illustrated in cases examined by Jiang and colleagues, Fang, Chen & An, and others. The theme of roles, relationships and shifting power in RPPs needs also to be examined more closely in the context of Asia, which will be discussed next in the review study by Wei and Huang in this volume.

Discussion: lesson study RPPs in Asia and implications for future RPP through lesson study

Lesson study in the context of RPP, or RPP through lesson study, raises questions about the nature and role of research in partnership; the use of resourceful and contextually appropriate tools; the organizational and relational conditions for productive partnership that support the learning goals. The eight cases in this volume offer particular examples of these issues as they have played out in some Asian RPPs. Wei & Huang’s review study examined 21 selected journal publications to explore RPP in Asia. They found co-existence of three modes or stages of RPPs as defined by Engestrom: Coordination, cooperation and communication.

Coordination is a mode often found in the early stage of an RPP, in which researchers and teachers in lesson study have their own different aims – for instance, while researchers aim to test and verify theories, teachers aim to develop an exemplary lesson. Each work within their own scripted roles and routines and there lacks a collaboration mechanism. Driven by theory, teachers overly rely on experts with limited buy in, and misunderstanding is common. Lesson study cases in many Singapore schools lacking strong school support (Lim et al., 2019) and some Japanese middle schools starting implementing lesson study are examples.

Cooperation mode represents a more mature stage in which researchers work as mentors or facilitators in lesson study so that theory building and problems of practice are both attended to. In this stage, practice moves from research in a single direction, with experts’ views still mattering most. Rules, routines and habits of mind of lesson study are not questioned, and the main goal is aimed at doing lesson study. Sustainability is still a key concern. An example cited is Ko’s (2011) study in which she played a dual role of co-designer of research lessons with teachers and a researcher who tried to understand and facilitate the process. This dual role allowed her to build a collaboration basis and a shared object, which led to improvement in their learning study.

At the desired communication stage, there is a communication mechanism established in the lesson study partnerships so that teachers are empowered and become more competent to play stakeholder roles together with researchers. They reflect, question and reconceptualize the established routines, roles and lesson study practices so that they are able to reconstruct their practice to make it sustainable. The studies Wei and Huang cite for this stage are more conceptual. They highlight the example of the Indonesian Mathematics and Science Education Project, which compared lesson study as a golden bridge (Suratno, 2012) when it was introduced around mid-2000. With its integrated lesson study in pre-service and in-service programmes, faculty members could simultaneously serve multiple roles as researchers, field instructors of teachers, and inservice providers all through the same lesson study project. Indeed, as Fang and Wang (2021) noted, based on analysis of the conference presentations from Indonesia (WALS 2019), with the effort extended from the above Projects over the years, lesson study has been sustained for over a decade even in a few schools in West Java (p. 66).

In mapping out lesson study in Asia along three stages or modes of RPPs, Wei & Huang provide a more complicated picture of how highly effective RPPs can be sustained in Asia. All three modes can exist in any of the Asian countries regardless of whether lesson study practices have been long existing or recently introduced.

Wei and Huang, as well as the case studies included in this volume, all suggest that cultural and historical lenses need to be brought to bear in understanding or developing lesson study as RPP. Intriguingly, the principles of RPP developed separately from lesson study literature (see, for example, the 2022 review by Farrell et al.) tend to ignore these aspects. This volume, however, whether in exploring the salience of dispotif, local reform initiatives, pace and pressures on time for deliberation, or more, speaks to the impotance of understanding RPP lesson studies as situated practice. While aiming to transform practice, the contexts – material, cultural, ideological, historical, etc. – require consideration.

The papers in this special issue provide fine grained analyses of the mutually reinforcing relationships between RPPs and lesson study and between the mutual learning of the partners. While the papers detail a diverse range of models and perspectives, some common themes emerge.

First of all, the lesson study RPPs represented here share the five principles of highly effective RPPs: shared commitment, focused on persistent problems of practice to improve educational outcomes, the central role of research in systematically engaging all partners in different phases of research to address the problems of practice identified, resourceful strategies to leverage diverse expertise and perspectives of the partners to fulfil the goals of partnerships, and decentralized power relations and joint ownership of the problems and solutions. Lesson study mechanism is of course important to understand and support, but the boundary crossing entailed in RPPs suggest other mechanisms to support boundary crossing, particularly in terms of strengthening the role of research and inquiry to build teacher capacity. However, in terms of the fifth criteria related to decentralized power relations (Farrell et al., 2021), Asian cultures’ tradition of respect for expert knowledge is still a dominant feature in most of the studies reported. Voice, input and contributions by university scholars, researchers or curriculum specialists are still weighted much more important in the discourse.

Lesson study is commonly regarded as a set of steps that involve practitioners in research on teaching and student learning through observation and data collection. Through the papers in this special issue, research not only illustrates additional layers of engagement alongside of lesson study steps that can purposefully develop rigorous research capacity (e.g., Chen & An, Fang, and Ronda & Danipog) but also suggests actionable resources to support such capacity building. To move towards the future, Chen & An spell out a set of interactive mechanisms to support boundary crossing in lesson study. Particularly reminded by the Ronda and Danipog case, we need to foster teacher researcher identity to sustain the work of lesson study. Similarly, in her study, Fang proposes that researchers develop curriculum deliberation moves into learnable strategies to serve as actionable tools to support teacher curriculum inquiry (Walker, 1971).

From Ko’s and Wood & Andrew’s work in learning study, variation theory offers a systematic framework to guide the planning focus and discourse. It has been effective in developing teacher’s content knowledge related to student learning. Yet, if compared with Ronda & Danipog, the research capacity building may be lacking in the long run, even though both learning study models have been sustained for many years. Viewing from Engestrom’s communicative mode of RPP, tools and theories have to be critically examined for their limitations and constraints in order for the RPP to continue developing their enterprise. Adapting lesson study for teacher educators to take a practical inquiry stance when working with teachers, as proposed by Jiang et al., may sound like a defeat in lesson study in terms of its original purpose; yet Jiang and colleagues argue that, at least in Singapore, it is a realistic approach to continue the RPP work for the benefit of improving practice productively but slowly, particularly in that fast-paced school system.

From Atsushi & Saito’s work, we are reminded that it is important to understand current and future work not only based on progress and achievement but also on historical self and cultural practice and discourse. This is necessary to handle the challenges in building a long-term RPP. Wang et al.’s case appears to be a highly positive one in which research and practice works within one “family” through strategic design of a graduate programme, one that is designed to provide longitudinal practice-based collaborative platforms to build sustainable habits of reflective practitioners.

In terms of the mutual learning between university researchers, curriculum specialists and school teachers, several studies – such as Chen & An, Fang, Jiang et al., Wood & Andrew, Ronda & Danipog – help make this visible. For implications, we draw on Pereira & Fang’s review “ Research practice partnership for schools and universities”. That review provides a historical and theoretical overview of the three common traditions of teacher-practitioner research in the form of action research, narrative inquiry, and teacher research, all of which have implications for lesson study in RPP. As Elliott (1987) attests, lesson study (LS) is a form of action research, especially within the context of collaboration between teachers and researchers to best realize the fundamental education values in action and the focus more on educational processes rather than on pre-specified outcomes. It is within this collaborative ethos, which is also a moral practice for professional development (Elliott, 1987), that this review is situated.

For future research, the same set of questions asked by Farrell et al. (2022) also apply to lesson study RPP research: What are the affordances and constraints of boundary practices of different lesson study designs? What is the relationship between boundary infrastructure and organizational conditions? Are there certain kinds of boundary infrastructures that are more conducive to learning if participating organization have little support in place, compared with those with ample knowledge, communication pathways, SKL (strategic knowledge leadership) practice and resources? As lesson study in research practice partnership seeks to be sustainable, we need to explore such questions so as to move beyond a focus on “steps” and work to support long-term education transformation.