Improving teachers’ teaching and learners’ learning

Morris & Hiebert (2011) point out a number of important considerations for improvingteaching; their main focus is on "creating shared instructional products". The collaborative work among teachers, in combination with small assessments of the children’s learning, has been shown to be an excellent means of improving quality in teaching situations. The teachers’ assumptions are closely linked to Hattie’s (2012) arguments for getting teachers to plan lessons or learning activities collaboratively. However, it is not about finding the best activities or lessons, it is about studying what it takes to learn at different ages and in different subject areas. In the same way as researchers are supposed to build their knowledge on the shoulders of other researchers, the development of teaching should build on knowledge of previous praxis and its outcomes. Such iterative processes have been used in other cultures for decades. See e.g. lesson study in Japan (Lewis, Perri and Friedkin, 2009), for example, and learning study in Hong Kong (Lo, 2012). Both Hattie (2011) and the theoretical framework applied in learning study, i.e. variation theory, have been influenced by Bransford’s (2000) suggestions that classrooms must be learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-rich and community-centered. Learning Study implies a way to arrange teaching which means that a specific and well-defined learning object is focused and emphasis is put on how the content is presented to the learners. This enables teachers to take the learners perspective and understand the critical aspects of a learning object. In this paper we argue for how learning study could be used to study and improve teaching and thereby put focus on quality in teaching. Our short examples from previous learning studies demonstrate how teachers’ awareness of children’s thinking and learning can create a learning environment of high quality.