Top-down Meets Grassroots: Can the Common Core Standards and Lesson Study Work Together?

While reading the Common Core Standards recently, I got to thinking about the professional development model of lesson study, specifically, how lesson study and the Core Standards might coexist. (See this earlier post for more about lesson study.) Leaving the politics that surround the Core Standards aside, I wanted to write about how lesson study could help make the Core Standards work better for teachers and students, or how it came to my mind: top-down meets grassroots.

Tempering Top-down

Teachers are all too familiar with the top-down influence of standards on their work, in particular the move towards mandated one-size-fits-all curriculum that hasn’t proven to be effective over time. What made me feel hopeful about the Core Standards was a section in the introduction entitled, “A focus on results rather than means.” Here, it is emphasized that the Core standards are “required achievements” and that ”… the standards leave room for teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how those goals should be reached…."

From the pro-Core Standard camp I have heard this before. However, while reading it, my hopes were raised that there might be a confluence of the “room” the standards give teachers and the current growth of lesson study among schools and teachers in the United States.

Growing Grassroots

Until recently, lesson study has often found its way into U.S. classrooms beginning with one or two curious, dedicated teachers and growing into whole-school support. The state of Florida is now mandating lesson study, and the number of teachers participating in lesson-study groups is growing, but I still see lesson study as primarily a grassroots movement.

Bringing It Together

The lesson-study process gets right at the heart of allowing teachers “to determine how those goals should be reached.” It has the potential to help teachers make meaning of standards in a thoughtful, in-context way that forcing them to write the number of the standard on their lesson plan could never do.

In the lesson-study model, teachers support each other in thinking creatively about how to help students meet a learning goal. In the process, they learn to see what works and what doesn’t. Lesson study allows teachers to do this important work in a safe environment where the students are at the center of the conversation. What better way to support teachers in learning and implementing standards?

Perhaps the coexistence of lesson study and the Core Standards can lessen the influence of the Goliath-sized, politically connected publishers and test makers, putting teacher work back in the hands of the folks who know their kids best, the teachers.

Grady Carson is a Program Manager at Developmental Studies Center.