Learning from "The Learning Study"

The ”Learning Study” is an arrangement inspired by the Japanese ”Lesson study” and by the idea of ”Design experiments”. The point of departure for a Learning study is a specific object of learning (i.e. something the students are supposed to learn). A group of teachers, usually together with a researcher, try to find as a powerful way of teaching the particular object of learning as possible. They do so by drawing on their experiences, earlier research, their mapping of the students’ pre-understandings and on a specific theory of learning. They plan and carry out a lesson (or a series of lessons) and try to find out how the students have appropriated the object of learning. Their observation of the lesson(s) and their analysis of the outcomes give them additional information to be used for revising the lesson plan. A new cycle of pre-test, lesson, post-test, evaluation is then carried out. The whole Learning study may comprise 3 or 4 such cycles. The participants learn from each other, from the students and from the theory. Again and again we find that seemingly subtle differences in how the object of learning is dealt with during the lesson yield dramatic differences in how it is appropriated by the students. Copyright © 2007 författarna, illustratörer.