ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the history and characteristics of post-World War II Japanese educational practices, in addition to a history of lesson studies specifically, including a discussion of its contemporary challenges. It demonstrates how some forms of the Japanese lesson study are being implemented in other countries. The chapter discusses the existence of educational practices and lesson studies of different origins and the need to re-evaluate them. The historical origins of the Japanese lesson study date back to the early Meiji era, with the launch of an elementary school based on the 1872 Education Code. The chapter summarises the historical development of post-World War II teaching practices in Japan in light of representative practical records from each period. By the 1990s, Manabu Sato's lesson study paradigm shift theory had been put forward as a theory that could combat the movement of lesson study toward institutionalisation and loss of substance.
