A Lesson Is Like a Swiftly Flowing River: How Research Lessons Improve Japanese Education

n recent years, Japanese elementary school teachers have succeeded in making a basic change in their approach to teaching science. They have shifted from ’teaching as telling’ to ’teaching for understanding’, and they accomplished this as they taught their classes and continued with their usual professional duties. How did they achieve this remarkable change? As we investigated the question over the past three years, Japanese teachers repeatedly pointed to the impact of ’research lessons’ (kenkyuu jugyou) as central to individual, schoolwide, and even national improvement of teaching.