The aim of this lesson study is to develop knowledge about how teachers can enhance students’ digitizing dancing in grade four, by the use of ‘flipped classroom’.
Research question:
The specific research question of the study is: what difference in knowledge is expressed by the teacher’s during their collegial discussions before and after their lessons of digitized dance lesson in the subject of Sport and Health?
Methological and theoretical framework:
The structure of the study is a collective and cyclical processes (Lewis, 2015), aiming to develop an experienced problem (Lewis & Tsuchida, 1997) which is comparable to the lesson study method (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). In order to account for the teachers' statements and experiences of improvement areas in teaching practice, the variational theoretical perspective has been taken into account (Holmqvist, 2006; Lo, 2014; Marton & Lo, 2017) as a lens.
The participants are four teachers and 25 students. The teachers have met on average every second week for two hours during a nine-month period. The data material consists mainly of teachers’ collegial reflections, classroom observations, interviews with teachers and video documentations. The lesson study has also been shared for all the school members and at Malmo University.
Teaching design:
The teaching design are based on a video of dance with instructions, which is put on the school's learning platform three days in advance. The students are supposed to learn as much as possible before the lesson. To put out something in advance that students can share when they want and how often they want, is called Flipped Classroom (Barker, 2013). Some of the instructions were about getting well prepared for the dance lesson, to be divided in groups and that the students will give each other a “friend's response” in the form of improvement feedback.
Result and analysis:
The evaluating and analysis, which consists of a selection of transcripts that illustrate and relate to the research question of the study, after the lesson study highlighted four aspects of learning:
Aspect one: The instructions on the dance and lesson that the teacher put on the school's learning platform three days before the lesson seem to improve the quality of the lesson and the equivalence between the students.
Aspect two: The students in need of additional customization are included in the dance. According to the teacher, this depends partly on a positive cooperative climate and on comrades learning through computers.
Aspect three: The comrades response takes place formatively and continuously while everyone develops and refines their dance steps and movement patterns during the lesson.
Aspect four: Since all students in each group have each computer, there is no power struggle over who will hold the computer.
Conclusion:
Based on learning aspects two and four, the computer seems to make it possible to distinguish the dance pattern for student learning. Based on learning aspects one and three, the flipped classroom contributes to an increased relevance structure and to an improved lesson. This kind of lesson study seems to have a mediating effect on learning and respect for each other. The students' comrade response can be characterized by the so-called proximal development (Säljö, 2014). The teacher's changed teaching structure seems to have influenced the students' ability to distinguish learning objects from the dance (Marton & Booth, 1997).
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References:
Barker, D. (2013). Input Flipped Classroom. Stockholm, Sweden: Natur & Kultur.
Holmqvist, M. (Ed.). (2006). Lärande i skolan: Learning study som
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Lewis, C. (2015). What Is Improvement Science? Do We Need It in Education? Educational
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Lewis, C. & Tsuchida, I. (1997). Planned educational change in Japan: The shift to student-centered
elementary science. Journal of Education Policy, 12:5, 313–331.
Lo, M. L. (2014). Variationsteori: för bättre undervisning och lärande [Variation theory: for better
teaching and learning]. Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur.
Marton, F. & Lo, M. L. (2007). Learning from the "Learning Study". Journal of
Research in Teacher Education, 14(1), 31-46.
Marton, F., & Booth, S. (1997). Learning and awareness. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum
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Stigler, J. W., & Hiebert, J. (1999). The teaching gap: Best ideas from the world’s teachers for
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Säljö, R. (2014). Lärande i praktiken - Ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. [Learning in practice - A socio-
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2018. article id B0436
Flipped classroom, lesson study, variations theory, comrade response, professional development
World Association of Lesson Studies (WALS) International Conference 2018, Beijing, China (23-26 november, 2018)