ABSTRACT
Teachers of Primary Year 4 and Year 5 social studies classes agreed to participate in the Twenty-First-Century Teaching and Learning research project. After an introductory three-day workshop with four other subject groups, each group worked with a facilitator and a research assistant through cycles of lesson study. In this chapter, the progress of two different groups is discussed. In both studies, the importance of learners’ experience of systematic variation emerged. In the first example of ‘neighbourhood’, extracts from the teacher group’s discussion in planning, designing and reviewing the lessons illustrate the teachers’ exchanges that had the potential to determine the groups’ view of the object of learning and to influence the design of the research lesson. In the second example on ‘route’, a second-order perspective on the students’ experience of the lesson design revealed by interviewing the students helped the teachers to understand the outcome of the research lesson and to plan for a second cycle.
