Journal of Scholastic Inquiry: Special Edition
Volume 10, Page 103
be prepared to meet the academic needs of these students. In this study, a university’s lesson study program was redesigned to address this need by incorporating collaborative planning of research lessons with a focus on teaching ELLs. Student teachers, mentor teachers, and university instructors collaboratively designed lessons taught by lead student teachers followed by reflective debriefing conversations in diverse elementary schools, thereby impacting the professional growth of all student teachers. Specifically, student teachers are more confident in planning instruction for ELLs and are better able to teach ELLs and the academic content, due to participation in the lesson study program. In addition, student teachers have a greater understanding of how to collaboratively plan with peers and mentors and are more likely to do so in the future. Lead student teachers, in particular, benefitted from the lesson planning sessions and the opportunity to teach the research lessons for their peers. Perhaps taking on a leadership roll with more responsibilities provided the opportunity for this greater impact. Even though it added a layer of stress, lead student teachers consistently expressed that they enjoyed and learned from the experience, as demonstrated by this comment, “Before the lesson, I was nervous to have my peers watch me, but I definitely think it is both a wonderful learning experience as well as a rewarding experience” (personal communication, October 3, 2018). In order for all student teachers to have this learning experience, the researcher will work with university instructors to incorporate Marble’s (2007) approach to lesson study, that is, small groups of pre-service teachers collaborating on a research lesson in three iterative cycles so that all have the opportunity to plan, observe, reflect, revise, and teach the lesson. Preparing teachers to work effectively with ELLs is a current focus of teacher preparation programs, although many are struggling to do so (Hallman & Meineke, 2016, Hutchinson, 2013; Liu & Ball, 2019). This study contributes to the body of research by intentionally connecting learning to teach ELLs to the collaborative practice of lesson study in a teacher preparation program. The framework for providing facilitated, collaborative planning, teaching, and reflection sessions focused on teaching ELLs provides the needed link between theory and practice, foundation ELLs courses and authentic teaching, that can pave the way for student teachers to become successful classroom teachers of ELLs. However, there are two limitations to this research. First, due to the small sample size,
