External and Extrinsic Factors of Lesson Study

Because lesson study is not an individual activity, but a collaborative activity, it depends not only on teacher's characteristics, but also on other factors come from outside teacher's personal disposition. These are highlighted as follows:

a. Students characteristics
As the lesson study focuses on the students' learning improvement, students play important roles in the success of lesson study. Students at a research lesson classroom will see "outsiders", observers, during the lesson. It can affect their learning concentration when they feel surprised with the existence of the observers.

b. Collaboration among teachers
It is clear that lesson study cannot be done individually as lesson study is a group activity. Each member of lesson study group must take participation during all steps and phases in the lesson study cycle. Collaboration and cooperation in lesson study can be made among teachers from the same school, or from different schools of the same district, among teachers teach the same subject or teach different subjects.

c. Connection to knowledgeable others, including colleagues
educational experts and facilitators (coaches) who can help the lesson study group in analyzing and setting the lesson study goals, observing the research lesson, analyzing the observation data, revising the lesson plan.

The need of knowledgeable others is urgent when the members of lesson study group are new to lesson study. Even when they already experienced lesson study, they need experts such as mathematics educators, mathematics education researchers to help them make better lesson plan preparation and lesson improvement. Knowledgeable others (outside examiner, invited advisor, or reactor to the lesson): college/university lecturers (content specialists, content educators, etc.), experienced teachers, and district supervisors have important role in the lesson study implementation and dissemination.
The following are some functions of other knowledgeable others for the lesson study group (Fernandez, 2001):

• to provide a different perspective when reacting to the lesson study work of the group
• to provide information about subject matter content, new ideas, or reforms
• to share the work of other lesson study groups, also
• to act as cheerleaders to encourage teachers to persist to act as cheerleaders to encourage teachers to persist in the process.

Effective lesson study depends on observation and subsequent discussion skills. Post-lesson discussions should focus on student thinking and should be driven by data collected during the research lesson. In turn, the data collection itself should be intentional and it is planned in advance with a particular focus. The resulting discussion should focus on students’ solution strategies, information organization, and types of errors. Formulation a set of questions in advance will be useful to guide the post-lesson discussion, rather than simply presenting data collected by each team member. Collaboration with content specialists will help teachers to get ideas about the particular aspects of student thinking to target for observation. They can also provide feedback on emerging ideas or lesson plans, participate in research lessons as data collectors, and provide comments and suggestion on post-lesson discussion.

d. Learning resources:
As lesson study concerns with teaching and learning processes, this activity requires learning resources that will be used by the teacher who teach the research lesson. This includes:

• Lesson plans that reveal and promote student thinking
• Tools that support collegial learning during lesson study
• Mathematical Tasks & Student Work
• Curriculum Materials
• Research Articles & Summaries
• Lesson Videos
• Reflection Forms & Questions

All these resources may be available readily, or need to be prepared by the lesson study group.

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