In each WALS newsletter we will focus on the research of one member of the PhD students/early career researchers’ network, and in this newsletter we learn about the work of: Micaela Martins: Institute of Education, University of Lisbon
 Initial Teacher Education (ITE) aims for prospective teachers (PTs) to develop their knowledge about teaching and students’ learning. Notwithstanding, many ITE courses do not challenge the PTs to reflect on their previous ideas and they end up adopting the same teaching approaches they experienced as students.
Lesson study (LS) is a way to foster the PTs’ knowledge, focusing on students’ learning. Therefore, we need to understand how to structure LS to integrate ITE programs.
My study aims to understand how LS can promote the development of mathematics PTs’ knowledge and identify what conditions are necessary to realize a successful LS on ITE in the Portuguese context, pointing out essential features for PTs’ significant learning.
The study follows a qualitative approach, as a design-based research with two design cycles, in two academic years, in cooperation with teacher educators of two universities. Data collection began in 2019 and is ongoing. Data analysis focuses on the identification of key-moments that suggest the development of PTs’ knowledge, and the aspects they indicate regarding LS strengths and weaknesses.
The LS was structured to encourage PTs to design tasks to promote rich whole-class discussions, and plan a lesson in detail, allowing students to explore mathematics. Also, the LS aims to foster PTs’ reflection on important aspects related to a lesson, as students’ difficulties, solving strategies and reasoning processes.
Preliminary results show that LS discussions created opportunities for PTs to develop their knowledge, namely regarding lesson planning and the preparation of teacher’s interventions on the lesson.
Co-editor of the WALS-Routledge Book Series |
