Lesson study in initial teacher education : affordances and constraints in teaching mathematics through inquiry

Abstract

Pre-service teachers, reading for the Master in Teaching and Learning (MTL) degree at the Faculty of Education (University of Malta), are offered an 18-hour course on how to use inquiry as a pedagogical tool to teach mathematics to secondary school students. To teach this course, a mathematics teacher educator – referred to as ‘the lecturer’ – used lesson study as a teaching methodology with pre-service teachers enrolled in the MTL during the 2022-2023 academic year. This paper will focus on the affordances and constraints that lesson study, used for the first time as a teaching and learning methodology, offered to both the lecturer and his two students. Using the theory of affordances and constraints, data analysis sheds light on how lesson study was applied and experienced by pre-service teachers, and to what extent it provided them with learning opportunities. The aim of this paper is to critically analyse outcomes that could prompt a discussion around why lesson study might be a useful and promising approach in initial teacher education (ITE). This paper will delve into the lesson study model adopted by ‘the lecturer’, the existing knowledge of pre-service teachers and their disposition towards lesson study and inquiry teaching, and the influence of the course and the school context on their enactment of lesson study and inquiry teaching.