A Phenomenological Analysis of Lesson Study: Implications for Persian-as-a-second language (PSL) Learners’ Autonomy

Lesson study is a recent development in Education to boost the quality of learning, but it has not received the attention it deserves in Iran. Given that the lesson study has been adapted from Japan, it is essential to examine and study its implementation and examine the strengths and weaknesses in the educational systems of different countries (Fujii, 2019; Saito, 2012; Stigler & Hiebert, 2016). Considering that lesson study has become a long-standing tradition in the Japanese educational system, and school reform and teacher education centers, the results of studies of (Emamipour & Khakbaz, 2019, Khakbaz et al., 2009, Maleki Arzin Abadi, 2016; Sobhani, 2018) showed that lesson study in Iran differs in style and implementation from that of the Japanese model and other countries. Therefore, it is necessary to study the experiences of practitioners qualitatively. Teachers sometimes face administrative difficulties and obstacles in the implementation and use of lesson study. Identifying these barriers and problems is only possible through their own experiences. This phenomenological study was conducted at the headquarters of education in East Azarbaijan, Tabriz, Iran. The headquarters of education in Tabriz is an organization with five branches. It has about 670 primary schools, 145,000 enrolled grade 1-6 students, and 3,600 primary teachers throughout Tabriz in (2018-2019) (Headquarters of education of East Azarbaijan, 2020). The participants were 15 primary teachers selected through purposeful sampling, as this was the number at which “saturation” of the data was reached. After the 15th interview, there were no new themes generated from the interviews. The primary purpose of this research was to study the experiences of teachers regarding lesson study. We selected primary school teachers who were in the lesson study team. They participated voluntarily. We provided a privacy consent agreement to protect the rights, autonomy, privacy, and confidentiality of the participants. They were fully informed of all aspects of the study, and their ways of involvement in the research. We reserved them an unconditional right of withdrawal at any time without giving any reason, obtained permission to use their data in any scientific platform such as international journals and conferences, and promised to conceal their identifiable information in the results. The research was carried out in the academic year of (2018-19). The study participants, participating in the interview voluntarily, had more than ten years of teaching experience at elementary schools. Furthermore, they had participated in the conferences in the field twice and inservice lesson study courses. A semi-structured interview was used to collect the data. The data were analyzed using the inductive thematic analysis, as one of the best-known methods for analyzing and reporting themes within qualitative data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). To analyze the data, interview transcripts were read several times independently by the research team member to minimize researcher bias. Next, open coding was used, and initial codes were generated and grouped into categories according to their similarities. Then, emergent themes were extracted, and a comprehensive analysis was done to examine how the themes contributed to an understanding of the data. Finally, each team members reviewed each other's codes and themes. To ensure the reliability of the coding and classification process of themes, Cohen’s kappa coefficient was calculated ,and it was .85. Based on the results of the interviews, eight main themes were extracted: The perception of lesson study; insufficient teacher knowledge of the lesson study; low collaboration in the lesson study; the existence of administrative limitations in the lesson study; lack of motivation in teachers; improvement of teacher-related factors; the development of collaboration; and improvement of facilities. The results suggest that teachers are not necessarily well prepared for this innovative technique, but they suggest several strategies to improve the quality of this technique in classrooms. The findings can be used for identifying problems, improving administration methods of lesson study in schools, the removal of obstacles and developing the knowledge and skills of lesson study. The findings of the present study showed that teachers are not satisfied with the way lesson study is implemented in schools, and they are not well prepared for it. However, it should be noted that lesson study as a method of professional development is only theoretically discussed among teachers, and the educational system has not paid serious attention to it; most importantly, teachers and school agents do not yet view it as an improvement of teachers’ professional development. The study's findings may carry some implications for teachers’ professional development, learner autonomy, and PSL teacher action research. Teachers need to keep abreast of the latest methodological developments in the field to be able to help their students to be autonomous learners. To do so, teachers can draw on lesson study as a methodological option to share their ideas with other teachers which they can benefit from and observe how these ideas work with their students.