Student Voice in Lesson Study Giving Students a Say

Introduction

Anne Mette Færøyvik Karlsen, Claudia Mewald, Tomoko Tamura, Yuko Uesugi

Part I

Student Voice in Lesson Study: from theory to practice

1. Student Voice in Lesson Study - an overview

Anne Mette Færøyvik Karlsen

2. Pedagogical implications of attending to student voice

Claudia Mewald

Part II

Student Voice in Lesson Study with social impact

3.  Exploring student voice in Lesson Study at a Norwegian lower secondary school

Anne Mette Færøyvik Karlsen, Nina Helgevold

4. Student voice in foreign language education: the role of feedback

Claudia Mewald

5. Collaborating with students within Lesson Study groups: improving outcomes of Lesson Study at a senior school in Scotland 

Andrew Kirkwood, John Paul Mynott

6. Student voice in teacher education in Hungary

Agnes Klein

Part III

Student-led Lesson Study

7. Can the perspectives and agency of students enhance Lesson Studies and what encourages and discourages teachers from actively involving students in Lesson Studies?

Tomoko Tamura, Peter Dudley

8. Active learning in the context of Japanese culture

Yuko Uesugi

9. Students as partners in Lesson Study: towards meaningful participation and educational co-agency

Daisuke Suzuki, Tomoko Tamura

10. A new type of Lesson Study through student voice: understanding learning through the eyes of students and teachers

Yasuhiro Shibata

Part IV

Case stories

11. Student voice as a means of developing inclusive learning environments: A Lesson Study on optimising learning for the visually impaired

Michael Krebs

12. ‘Now that I think about it!’

Eliciting student voice through discussion groups in Lesson Study

Andrew Kirkwood

13. Exploring students’ latent voices through lesson analysis: off-topic utterances and teacher prompts in fostering deep thinking

Yu Zhu, Masanobu Sakamoto

14. The motivation of Japanese high school students to participate in physics classes

Yuichi Hirano

Part V

Student Voice in Lesson Study with educational impact

15. The elevation of student voice in teacher education

Joanna C. Weaver, Emily Mueller

16. Student voice in action: Lesson Study as democratic and critical teacher education

Encarna Soto Gómez, María J. Serván Núñez, Ángel I. Pérez Gómez

17. What can be learned about students’ learning of subtraction from repeated task-based student interviews?

Hoda Ashjari, Éva Fülöp, Angelika Kullberg

18. Empowering pupils’ voices: transforming lessons through pupil-led planning in Japan

Miho Yamaguchi

Part VI

New approaches of Student Voice in Lesson Study

19. Towards a dialogic research-practice partnership model for Student Voice in Lesson Study and citizenship character education
Andrew J. Pereira, Yanping Fang, Pamela Costes-Onishi

20. Giving children a voice through pedagogical documentation in Lesson Study

Gonzalo Maldonado-Ruiz , Encarna Soto Gómez

21. Making the invisible learning visible: a phenomenological inquiry into student voice of unforgettable classroom moment

Shuying Li

Part VII

The next steps

22. Towards a model of Student Voice in Lesson Study

Claudia Mewald, Anne Mette Færøyvik Karlsen, Tomoko Tamura, Yuko Uesugi

Biography

Anne Mette Færøyvik Karlsen is an associate professor at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway, where she is responsible for courses that are part of the Master program of Educational Leadership. Her research focuses specifically on student voice and teachers’ professional learning in Lesson Study.

Claudia Mewald is an independent Lesson Study researcher and freelance teacher educator. She is a retired Professor of TESOL, having previously taught and conducted qualitative research in foreign language methodology, and testing and assessment at Austrian and international universities and schools.

Tomoko Tamura is a professor at Waseda University, Japan. Her work focuses on school-based curriculum development and management, student agency, Lesson Study, and teachers’ professional learning, and she has contributed to national-level educational policy discussions.

Yuko Uesugi is a professor at the prefectural Eikei University of Hiroshima, Japan, specialising in American literature and English education, focusing on Sylvia Plath, CLIL, and innovative pedagogy. She leads national and international projects on global competency, BEVI-based assessment, and developing new models linking intercultural competency with English proficiency.

‘Student Voice in Lesson Study: Giving Students a Say is a compelling and timely contribution to international Lesson Study research and practice. This outstanding volume demonstrates how students’ perspectives enrich teachers’ professional inquiry and deepen understanding of learning as a shared, dialogic process. The contributors show that Lesson Study can foster genuine pedagogic partnership, strengthening professional knowledge and educational improvement. Combining conceptual clarity with rich empirical insight, this book will be essential reading for educators, leaders, policymakers, and researchers committed to student-centred professional learning and school improvement’.

- David Pedder, Academic Dean, Emirates College for Advanced Education, Abu Dhabi, UAE

‘At its essence, Lesson Study is systemic collaborative professional learning among teachers, researchers, school administrators, textbook authors… and the focus of Lesson Study is students’ learning. But the students’ voice is often not explicitly present in the process. This book, by unequivocally “giving students a say” and considering them as “partners who have a voice within a learning partnership with educators, peers, school, and society,” brings to Lesson Study a new “driving force for innovation in teaching”’.

– Stéphane Clivaz, Lausanne University of Teacher Education, WALS president

‘This book captivates from its opening pages by challenging an assumption: that Lesson Study begins with the teacher. Instead, the authors invite us to see how it can begin with the student — with their questions, experiences, and ways of making meaning. In doing so, they offer a bold and refreshing reimagining of Lesson Study, positioning students not as observers but as authentic partners in shaping learning. The book inspires you to take a chance, reconsider the distribution of power in the classroom and see learning through the eyes of those for whom it exists. This is not just a collection of case studies, but a manifesto of a new approach — dialogical, ethical and truly transformative’.

– Tavilya Akimova, Zhubanov University, Department of Academic Quality, Vice director, Aktobe, Kazakhstan