7: Doing Collaborative Professional Learning Through Lesson Study

In this chapter, the author posits the professional development model of lesson study as a research methodology and a tool that facilitates higher education educators’ constructions of pedagogical knowledge. Through an overview of the author’s own personal engagement with lesson study, gleaned from several years of researching it and utilising it in the author’s professional practice, the author illustrates how lesson study has enabled the author to develop in the academic career. As a reader (associate professor) in the field of education, with senior leadership experience in research, the author argues that lesson study promotes leadership qualities through its intense collaborative arrangement between academic colleagues. In this way, knowledge, experience and values are shared through dialogic engagement, prompting co-reflection and the mutual challenging of ideas, and subsequently resulting in the co-construction of new knowledge. For leadership, such collaboration is used to model effective academic practice that challenges isolationism and encourages greater self-awareness. Lesson study is a tool for academic researchers to come together to delve into the wealth of knowledge available and to use it as an opportunity to better understand the role of context in professional learning.