The goal of this presentation is to discuss an on-going study on how Japanese public school teachers promote students’ non-cognitive development in the context of their academic lessons and how lesson study contribute to the development.

Across the world, lesson study has become a popular methodology of teacher professional development, but it has tendency to focus on enhancing students’ academic performance as its ultimate goal. However, it is not well-known that in Japan, lesson study dialogues often encompass how to promote students’ non-cognitive development in the context of academic teaching.

Historically speaking, Japanese public education has pursued three domains of human development—intellectual development, socio-emotional development and mental and physical strengths called 知徳体(chi-toku-tai) in Japanese. The Japanese national education law stipulates that the goal of education is to promote students’ whole person development, and public schools in Japan set their school goals in the ways that reflect this policy such as “Becoming smarter, kinder and stronger” and “Learning to become a caring, stronger and wiser person”. Accordingly, Japanese public school teachers make efforts to promote students’ whole person development in the context of their academic teaching (Kajita, 2016; Lewis, 1995).

In recent years, studies report that students’ non-cognitive abilities such as social skills, self-regulation and self-efficacy predict future success of students (Heckman & Kautz, 2012). There have been many attempts to incorporate this aspect of learning in educational practices across the world, but long before this trend, Japanese public education has encompassed students’ social-emotional learning as a part of its goals. Consequently, Japanese lesson study has served an arena not only to consider how to promote students’ academic learning but also to cultivate students’ non-cognitive, social-emotional learning. The question is how this is actually done in Japanese public schools.

This study attempts to answer the following research questions:

1)     How do Japanese teachers actually create opportunities for students’ non-cognitive learning in their academic teaching?

2)     How does Japanese lesson study contribute to acquiring the expertise according to expert teachers?

The school districts and the school principals in the greater Tokyo area were asked to give a list of expert teachers teaching at their elementary schools by considering their long-term experiences and commitment to their teaching. Eventually 14 teachers teaching 3rd-6th grade classes were recruited in the study. The average number of years of their teaching experience was 18.0 years. The data collection involved video-taped observations of these teachers’ math lessons and follow-up teacher interviews on their intentions of the key actions and interactions during the math lessons. The following are the sample questions that were asked during the teacher interviews right after the observed lessons: 1) What are the things you remember most about your students’ responses in today’s math lessons? 2) To what extent do you think the goal of today’s lesson was accomplished? Why? 3) What kinds of experiences made you become capable of teaching math lessons in the way you taught today? The teacher interviews followed the principles of clinical interviews that included proving unclear answers, asking follow-up questions about things that seemed to require further clarifications and helping interviewees reflect on their thoughts (Ginsburg, 1999). After the observed lessons, students filled out the questionnaire that asked about their non-cognitive learning in their classes that involved three key constructs (autonomy, relatedness and competence) of the self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985). The sample questions in the questionnaire were: 1) Did you look forward to the math class today? (Autonomy, 1-5) 2) Do you think today’s math lesson was enjoyable? (Autonomy, 1-5) 4) Do you think that it’s important to listen to other people’s ideas in mathematics classes? (Relatedness, 1-5) 5) Do you feel that you are getting better at math these days? (Competence, 1-5) 6) Do you feel you can solve math problems if you try hard? (Competence, 1-5) 7) Please write down your reflection on today’s mathematics class. (open-ended item) To compare the level of students’ non-cognitive learning in the observed classes, the same questionnaire was given to the students taught by novice teachers with teaching experiences of 3 years or less. Finally, triangulated analyses of these sets of data set were conducted to extract the nature of teacher expertise to promote students’ non-cognitive abilities in academic teaching.

The analysis of the student questionnaire responses revealed that in the classes taught by the expert teachers, students reported a higher level of autonomy, relatedness and competence compared to students taught by novice teachers. The observed lessons revealed that the expert teachers followed the process of Japanese mathematics inquiry-lessons that involved 1) asking an initial rich inquiry question, 2) individual or group problem solving, 3) whole class consensus building on problem solving (called neriage) and 4) summary (Shimizu, 1999). However, the teachers often deviated from the four-step model throughout the lessons. The teacher interviews revealed that expert teachers incorporated diverse interactions at various points of their lessons and paid special attention to helping all the students—especially underachieving students—build confidence and the sense of agency and develop the feeling of togetherness as a learning community. Many of them suggested that academic learning and social-emotional learning should go hand in hand, and their teaching exemplified this belief. Most of the expert teachers attributed their expertise to promote students’ non-cognitive development to local-level lesson study and mentorship at their schools. These local opportunities had helped them open their eyes to this aspect of academic teaching as they were often questioned about their identity as teachers. For them, lesson study was a professionally and personally significant endeavor, rather than a burden, since they clearly see its relevance to contributing to students’ well-being in their developmental years—something that they genuinely care about. It could be seen that lesson study remains sustainable in Japan because this emphasis on students’ whole person development—something that many teachers feel deeply committed to. Teacher education programs across the world could embrace this aspect of lesson study if it seems difficult to get buy-in from teachers.

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