Lesson studies across disciplines as a new way of supporting Teacher Collaboration

Abstract

Lesson studies were originally used to develop subject didactics in teacher subject communities. In this article, we describe a project aiming at developing collaboration between teachers in a teachers’ year group teaching different subjects to investigate if lesson studies used this way could support the development of the teachers’ professional capital. Supporting teachers’ professional capital will give them possibilities to solve challenges across the subjects that they meet in school. We have named these lesson studies cross-disciplinary lesson studies, CDLS (Danish abbreviation: FLS).

      The study is an action research study in which we collected qualitative data using interviews and observation. The data are analyzed through two theoretical lenses: Hargreaves and Fullan’s ‘professional capital’ and the five elements characterizing professional learning communities (Albrechtsen).

We conclude that CDLS can support the development of teachers’ professional capital across the disciplines and that this way of collaboration strengthens the develop­ment of a cross-disciplinary pedagogy that can help solving common didactical chal­lenges met across the subjects. The development of the teachers’ professional capital also supported participation and well-being of the students.

This is the first Danish study to examine cross-disciplinary lesson studies (CDLS) and we recommend more studies to be conducted as a way to develop teachers’ pro­fessional learning communities to support student learning.