Mathematics teachers' opinions about their professional development and lesson planning: Lesson study perspectives

Abstract

The lesson study is a teaching model that emerged from the needs for teachers’ developments in their professions in Japan. This method allows teachers to work collaboratively in line with some common goals, (i) to plan their lessons, (ii) to eliminate their professional deficiencies, and (iii) to gain different perspectives by contributing to their professional development. In this context, the aim of the study is to determine elementary school mathematics teachers’ opinions on how the lesson study activities contribute to their professional developments. In addition, determining how teachers plan the lessons with respect to lesson study activities is another goal of this study. The method of the research is action research, which is one of the qualitative research methods. The study, carried out in the form of three lesson cycles, was completed in six weeks. Content analysis method was used to analyze the data in this study. The coding process of the data is based on constant comparison method. The research results indicated that the collaboration among mathematics teachers using the lesson method contributed to their professional development in various ways, and that teachers prepared lesson plans by paying attention to different factors related to geometry lesson before instructions. Consequently, some suggestions were made on the results obtained.