Practice and reflection of Chilean mathematics teachers from the perspective of lessons study

Abstract

Within a doctoral work focused on the reflection of the mathematics teacher, we consider the realization of a teacher education course whose methodology was adhered to the Japanese lesson study. This work aims to examine theoretical elements of the lesson study and reflection to see their complementarity and to appreciate how the lesson study is a good tool to generate the reflection of teachers in a training course. We use a qualitative methodology to study two high school teachers, considering as dimensions the mathematical tasks of school within two cycles of lesson study. We show the relationship that we observe in the literature on the constructs and then analyze in the teacher education course how they are interlaced, showing some results of the reflection of the teachers within the cycles of lesson study realized within the course implemented in Chile. The teacher education experience shows that the lesson study favors in the teachers a greater involvement in their reflection processes, supporting their professional development. We observe elements of complementarity between the reflection and the lesson study, where this contributes with the practice and the collaborative work in order to encourage the reflective work of teachers.