Doing it our way: Results of using a teacher-driven approach, derived in Asia, to enhance English teaching quality in Hong Kong

Doing it our way: Results of using a teacher-driven approach, derived in Asia, to enhance English teaching quality in Hong Kong

• Walker, Elizabeth Anne
• Hau, Lily

2004

• F Learning & Teaching
  • FA General Teaching Strategies, Different Instructional Methods
• G Curriculum, Teaching & Learning: Specific Disciplines
  • GB English Language

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Unknown or Unspecified

Lesson Study' is an approach to improving teaching, with very good effects on learning outcomes in Japan. This systematic process, as implemented in Hong Kong, draws on Ference Marton's theory of variation in teaching/learning, and involves teacher collaboration in a cycle of 'research lessons' to continuously refine one lesson on a selected topic. The approach is potentially empowering for all participants, not only teachers, and is more 'bottom-up' than most other processes of curriculum change. This paper is a report of one Lesson Study across one year, in the English department of one English-medium secondary school. The paper describes the successes and failures of this process, with video evidence where appropriate. The paper then evaluates learning outcomes at several participant levels. Specifically, student outcomes were positive to a large extent, with one surprising deficit; and teacher/teacher educator outcomes exhibited considerable variation, posited as involving personal, cognitive and affective factors. The paper finally evaluates the suitability of the lesson study approach to language teaching, raising issues concerning alternative models of pedagogical grammar, for example, which might facilitate this potentially powerful tool for change.

Paper presented at the International Language in Education Conference 2004: The Way Forward in Language Education

• English

Conference Papers

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/5c851b18

2015-07-14