Professional Development Lesson 1

Last night, the class had the first lesson on Professional Development.

The lesson started off with Dr Yeap getting us to discuss about Professional Learning Community (PLC). Since my school had already embarked on the PLC journey, I found that I was able to share with the group members what my school had done in terms of PLC.

For my school, we usually have a PLC 'project'. In this project, the level teachers look and surface the areas of concern for that particular level. Once we've targeted the area of concern, we go on to design a lesson based on a particular strategy that we would like to use to help us in addressing that area of concern. In my opinion, it's something like a mini lesson study.

Dr Yeap then moved on to talk about Lesson Study and the variations of it that are out there. It was surprising to find out just how many countries are conducting different variations of lesson study. As Dr Yeap explained more about how lesson study is actually conducted, I realised that what my school is doing may not be essentially lesson study considering the fact that our cycles included a pre-test post-test for the sample class to actuallly sit for. I believe that what my school may be carrying out is actually Learning Study. Interesting.

However, in whatever variations of lesson study or learning study our schools may be conducting, I believe that as long as it goes on to helping the pupils and teachers, it is all worthwhile.