ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the use of case pupils and post lesson pupil interviews in sequences of research lessons for which Research Lesson Study developed in the UK is particularly known. Case pupils are the subjects of a lesson study group’s shared focus and interest over these research lesson sequences. While lesson study groups plan their research lessons for whole classes, they also identify three case pupils who typify learner groups in the class and whose learning the teachers carefully imagine and predict when collaboratively planning the research lessons in which they become reference pupils. Post lesson discussions begin by examining not the teaching but what the case pupils were observed to have learned compared with what was predicted. This chapter explains how case pupils can act as catalysts for surfacing jointly owned, novel and often challenging interpretations of what was happening in the minds of these pupils and of others over a research lesson sequence. We examine how post lesson student interviews contribute further to this student’s-eye view. We draw upon recent research lesson studies in schools to exemplify how these processes combine to inform teachers’ learning about their pupils’ learning, subsequent teaching and curriculum design that better meets students’ needs, and leadership of learning in the school.
