Lesson Study: Its Influence on Planning, Instruction, and Self-Confidence of Pre-Service Mathematics Teachers

This mixed-method research aimed to determine the influence of lesson study on planning, instruction, and self-confidence of pre-service mathematics teachers. Ten pre-service teachers coming from a certain state college in Iloilo City were purposively chosen to be the participants of the study. Results revealed that the lesson study process had a very high influence on the instructional planning of the pre-service teachers teaching Grade 8 mathematics. The collaborative planning demonstrated improvement of planning skills of the pre-service teachers, open mindedness for corrections, and opportunity for further collaboration. In collaboratively planning the lesson, the pre-service teachers felt more confident in their ability to plan mathematical lessons in Grade 8 and thus, lesson quality had been improved. In the first implementation of the lesson study, pre-service teachers had a basic performance in delivering the lesson to their students. As the innovation progressed, the pre-service teachers were getting better in delivering the lesson. In the last implementation of the lesson study, they were considered proficient pre-service teachers in terms of instruction. Pre-service teachers started from teaching the collaboratively planned lesson and gradually progressed to showing their own style of teaching. The lesson study clearly afforded the pre-service teachers the opportunity to explore different ways to teach. Furthermore, the pretest mean scores in the self-confidence survey were classified as showing high confidence while the posttest mean scores were classified as showing very high confidence. In addition, the pre-service teachers increased their confidence to teach mathematics from collaborative planning, teaching, debriefing, revising, and re-teaching. Significant increase existed in the self-confidence of pre-service teachers before and after the conduct of the lesson study. Likewise, there was a significant improvement in the mean scores of pre-service teachers’ teaching effectiveness between the first and last implementation of the lesson study. Finally, pre-service teachers were able to produce lesson plans as resource materials for mathematics as a result of lesson study.