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What can Japan teach us about teaching?

Coming up this fall we'll be releasing a documentary about teacher preparation - how people learn to become teachers and how they get better once they're in the classroom. This week: how do Japanese teachers learn to improve on the job?

June 11, 2015

What can Japan teach us about teaching?
An elementary school in Japan. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
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Japanese Lesson Study
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Coming up this fall we’ll be releasing a documentary about teacher preparation – how people learn to become teachers and how they get better once they’re in the classroom. This week: how do Japanese teachers learn to improve on the job?

A woman named Catherine Lewis was in Japan in the 1990s writing a book about children’s behavior and classroom management. She wasn’t planning to study teaching, but she ended up getting really interested when she began to notice how students in Japan were learning – and how much SHE was learning by sitting in on their lessons. Lewis spoke with our correspondent Emily Hanford.

Want to watch lesson study in action? Check out these video clips from Catherine Lewis’ web site. 

Read more about Catherine Lewis’s books: Educating Hearts and Minds: Reflections on Japanese Preschool and Elementary Education and Lesson Study Step by Step
How Teacher Learning Communities Improve Instruction 

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