Editorial

Citation

Elliott, J. (2016), "Editorial", International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, Vol. 5 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLLS-11-2015-0034

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, Volume 5, Issue 1.

Breaking into new fields of research-based teaching and learning

In this issue the IJLLS is very pleased to publish some case studies of teaching and learning in the field of higher education. This is a breakthrough for the journal. For some time we have been seeking submissions from teachers and lecturers in higher education which depict their own research-based teaching. This issue is a breakthrough in this respect for the journal and it is a timely one. In a number of countries higher education has been driven by research into lecturer's subject disciplines to the neglect of research into problems of teaching and learning within those disciplines. For example, in the UK there has emerged a policy discourse, which argues for improvements in the quality of teaching as a condition of the right of higher education institutions to set their own student fees. Lesson and learning studies, which focus on the quality of the transactions between HE teachers and students with the dual aims of both improving them and systematically constructing a body of professional knowledge to inform pedagogical design, will make a very important contribution to pedagogical development in higher education institutions.

There is as yet no well-established publicly accessible knowledge base depicting attempts to improve the quality of teaching and learning within the higher education curriculum. The IJLLS aspires to make a significant contribution to the development of such a knowledge base across the higher education disciplines. Some of the papers in this issue signal that it has now made a start. The fact that they largely take the form of "small-scale" case studies should not be regarded as a limitation on their usefulness in generating a professional knowledge base to inform teaching and learning more generally in higher education. We now have good evidence that teachers can generalise insights from their peers' case studies to inform their own practice (see e.g. Kullberg and Runesson and Gustafsson in Volume 1, Number 3 of this journal), and that as such case studies accumulate constant comparisons can yield general diagnostic and action hypotheses for teachers to test and further develop through their case studies.

Wood and Cajkler's participatory lesson study is a good example of Alexander's "dialogic teaching", which I referred to in my editorial review article for Issue 4.4 as a possible theoretical model to inform the design of lesson studies. In this lesson study students take on the role of co-researchers with their teachers in designing their learning experiences and environment. It focuses on the growing international context of teaching and learning in higher education within the UK and depicts a case study of an MA in International Education at an English University.

The focus of Pranger's case study is a two-year Erasmus programme in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Innsbruck. Again the context is a highly international one in which the students come from all over the world. As with Wood and Cajkler's lesson study the student body is very diverse in many respects. This presents problems it is argued for traditional didactics with respect equalising students' engagement with learning. An alternative "peer leaning" process is selected as an experiment in reducing inequalities of opportunities for learning in the student body. This "body" is divided into distinct groups – active and passive learners; well-qualified and less-qualified learners with respect to subject-matter competence – as a basis for evaluating the effects of the peer learning process on student motivation and engagement with learning. The paper claims for evaluating the effects of the peer learning process on student motivation and engagement with learning. The paper claims that:

Peer-learning and group work foster the establishment of self-confidence and activity among students (in particular among initially less active and less qualified students). Consequently, the teaching and learning atmosphere improves. In the long run, this effect fosters a homogenisation of initially inhomogeneous levels of qualification/competence at a high level.

Pranger argues that although the case study does not demonstrate that content knowledge is significantly equalised across the student body the evidence of significant effects on levels of motivation and engagement in learning across this diverse group of students may well in the longer term impact on the acquisition of content knowledge. One possible explanation for such an outcome might well be that "peer learning" is a very effective "scaffolding" strategy.

Asyari et al.'s lesson study focuses on the integration of "problem-based learning" and "peer group investigation" as a learning process to focus on environmental issues and problems with the aim of developing students' "critical thinking" skills. Interestingly it takes the form of a "process" rather than an "objectives" model of pedagogical design. Although there is a concern to measure the quality of the learning outcomes in terms of "critical thinking" skills the focus of the lesson study is on improving the learning process itself, depicted as:

Learning that enables students to actively participate, beginning from deciding topics, planning an investigation activity, conducting an investigation to see environmental problems, writing an investigation report, presenting the investigation report, discussing the problems in class, and providing solution to the problems found can stimulate the students' critical thinking.

The assumption here is that the ends of teaching cannot be conceptualised independently of the means of realising them in action. It is also worth noting that this lesson study also gives students an active role in constructing and designing their own learning experiences with their teachers supporting them as facilitators.

Csida and Mewald's paper depicts a primary school lesson study in the use of an online resource designed to support teaching and learning in the field of EFL. As readers of this journal may be aware there is a growing interest in the development of "blended learning" in this field and in the use of Lesson Study by teachers to explore and resolve the issues and problems this poses for practice in the field. These are not unconnected with the aim of "developing independent learning in this field". Csida and Mewald's paper enables the reader to explore the extent to which the on-line resource enables the teachers engaged in this lesson study to realise this aim in the teaching and learning process.

Finally, the conceptual paper by Olteanu invites us to explore a further aspect in the development of a theory of Lesson Study. It presents a model for developing reflective practice through lesson study that links Schon's concepts of "reflecting in, on, and for action" with the concepts of "critical aspects" and "dimensions of variation" drawn from variation theory. It has certainly given me much food for thought with its possible conceptual implications for the theoretical framework I developed in Issue 4.4.

John Elliott