The Implementation of Lesson Study in Improving the Primary School English Teachers’ Professionalism on Developing Materials

Abstract

The implementation of lesson study as a means of improving teacher professionalism has been under research for long. In fact, a teacher generally acts like an actor/actress who is to perform many different roles at different times (Byrne, 1992; Brown & Lee, 2015). Inasmuch as the many roles the teacher should possess, s/he is required to always have efforts to develop her/himself professionally through informal and formal academic forum to pursue credentials, one of which is conducting lesson study for ongoing improvement of instruction. Lesson study, as a matter fact, has been popular in Japan to promote teachers’ professional development since 1990s. This practice has provided positive and significant impact on the improvement on the teachers’ way of teaching and students’ learning (Murata and Takahashi, 2002). Teachers will attempt to improve the lesson after conducting the lesson study with their colleagues, experts on education, and stake holders. The benefits of the implementation of lesson study have been verified by the results of research in America and Japan (Yoshida, 1999) and in Indonesia, exactly at SMA Lab Universitas Negeri Malang (2008). Due its positive impact on professional development, the lesson study was then put into empirical study to the primary lab school teachers. Ten English teachers were involved in the study to develop interactive student worksheets. Therefore, the design adopted is action research with four stages in two cycles: planning, implementation, observation and reflection. It was discovered that the teachers and students have displayed a positive response on it.